These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.

Email CommentIgnore CommenterFollow Commenter

Search TextCase SensitiveExact WordsInclude Comments

List of Bookmarks

First, the bragging dummies

Trump and Haley are still at it. The want to force China to take action against the DPRK by threatening to take North Korea “into their hands” if China refuses to comply. Haley said “But to be clear, China can do more, (…) and we’re putting as much pressure on them as we can. The last time they completely cut off the oil, North Korea came to the table. And so we’ve told China they’ve got to do more. If they don’t do more, we’re going to take it into our own hands and then we’ll start to deal with secondary sanctions.”

First, let’s reset this scene in a kindergarten and replay it.

Kid A has a fight with Kid B. Kid A threatens to beat up Kid B. Kid B then tells Kid A to go screw himself. Kid A does nothing, but issues more threats. Kid B keeps laughing. And then Kid A comes up with a brilliant plan: he threatens Kid C (who is much much bigger than Kid B and much, much stronger too!) by telling him “if you don’t make Kid B comply with my demands, I will take the issue in my own hands!“. The entire schoolyard erupts in hysterical laughter.

Question: how would you the the intelligence of Kid A?

Anyway,

This would all be really funny if this was a comedy show. But what this all is in reality is a slow but steady progression towards war. What makes this even worse is the media’s obsession with the range of North Korean missiles and whether they can reach Guam or even the US. With all due respect for the imperial “only we matter” (and never mind the gooks), there are ways “we”, i.e. the American people can suffer terrible consequences from a war in the Korean Peninsula which have nothing to do with missile strikes on Guam or the US.

The lucrative target: Japan

This summer I mentioned one of the most overlooked potential consequences of a war with the DPRK and I want to revisit this issue again. First, the relevant excerpt from the past article:

While I personally believe that Kim Jong-un is not insane and that the main objective of the North Korean leadership is to avoid a war at all costs, what if I am wrong? What if those who say that the North Korean leaders are totally insane are right? Or, which I think is much more likely, what if Kim Jong-un and the North Korean leaders came to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose, that the Americans are going to kill them all, along with their families and friends? What could they, in theory, do if truly desperate? Well, let me tell you: forget about Guam; think Tokyo! Indeed, while the DPRK could devastate Seoul with old fashioned artillery systems, DPRK missiles are probably capable of striking Tokyo or the Keihanshin region encompassing Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe including the key industries of the Hanshin Industrial Region. The Greater Tokyo area (Kanto region) and the Keihanshin region are very densely populated (37 and 20 million people respectively) and contain a huge number of industries, many of which would produce an ecological disaster of immense proportions if hit by missiles. Not only that, but a strike on the key economic and financial nodes of Japan would probably result in a 9-11 kind of international economic collapse. So if the North Koreans wanted to really, really hurt the Americans what they could do is strike Seoul, and key cities in Japan resulting in a huge political crisis for the entire planet. During the Cold War we used to study the consequences of a Soviet strike against Japan and the conclusion was always the same: Japan cannot afford a war of any kind. The Japanese landmass is too small, too densely populated, to rich in lucrative targets and a war would lay waste to the entire country. This is still true today, only more so. And just imagine the reaction in South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by missiles! The South Koreans have already made their position unambiguously clear, by the way. As for the Japanese, they are officially placing their hopes in missiles (as if technology could mitigate the consequences of insanity!). So yeah, the DPRK is plenty dangerous and pushing them into their last resort is totally irresponsible indeed, nukes or no nukes.

Yet, for some reason, the western media rarely mentions Japan or the possible global economic consequences on a strike against Japan. Very few people know for sure whether the North Koreans truly have developed a usable nuclear weapon (warhead and missile) or whether the North Korean ballistic missile truly can reach Guam or the US. But I don’t think that there is any doubt whatsoever that North Korean missile can easily cover the roughly 1000km (600 miles) to reach the heart of Japan. In fact, the DPRK has already lobbed missiles over Japan in the past. Some red-blooded Americans will, no doubt, explain to us that the US THAAD system can, and will, protect South Korea and Japan from such missile strikes. Others, however, will disagree. We won’t know until we find out, but judging by the absolutely dismal performance of the vaunted US Patriot system in the Gulf War, I sure would not place my trust in any US made ABM system. Last, but not least, the North Koreans could place a nuclear device (not even a real nuclear warhead) on a regular commercial ship or even a submarine, bring it to the coast of Japan and detonate it. The subsequent panic and chaos might end up costing even more lives and money than the explosion itself.

ORDER IT NOW

Then there is Seoul, of course. US analyst Anthony Cordesman put is very simply “A battle near the DMZ, directed at a target like Seoul, could rapidly escalate to the point at which it threatened the ROK’s entire economy, even if no major invasion took place“.

[Sidebar: Cordesman being Cordesman, he proceeds to hallucinate about the effects of a DPRK invasion of the ROK and comes up with sentences such as “Problems drive any assessment of the outcome of a major DPRK invasion of the ROK, even if one only focuses on DPRK- ROK forces. The DPRK has far larger ground forces, but the outcome of what would today be an air – land battle driven heavily by the overall mobility of DPRK land forces and their ability to concentrate along given lines of advance relative to the attrition technically superior ROK land and air forces could inflict is impossible to calculate with any confidence, as is the actual mix of forces both sides could deploy in a given area and scenario“. Yup, the man is seriously discussing AirLand battle concepts in the context of a DPRK invasion of the South! He might as well be discussing the use of Follow-on-Forces Attack concept in the context of a Martian invasion of earth (or an equally likely Russian invasion of the Baltic statelets!). It is funny and pathetic how a country with a totally offensive national strategy, military doctrine and force posture still feels the need to hallucinate some defensive scenarios to deal with the cognitive dissonance resulting from clearly being the bad guy.]

Why does Cordesman say that? Because according to a South Korean specialist “DPRK artillery pieces of calibers 170mm and 240mm “could fire 10,000 rounds per minute to Seoul and its environs.” During the war in Bosnia the western press spoke of “massive Serbian artillery strikes on Sarajevo” when the actual rate of fire was about 1 artillery shell per minute. It just makes me wonder what they would call 10,000 rounds per minutes.

The bottom line is this: you cannot expect your enemy to act in a way which suits you; in fact you should very much assume that he is going to do what you do not expect and what is the worst possible for you. And, in this context, the DPRK has many more options than shooting an ICBM at Guam or the US. The nutcases in the Administration might not want to mention it, but an attack on the DPRK risks bringing down both the South Korean and the Japanese economies with immediate and global consequences: considering that rather shaky and vulnerable nature of the international financial and economic system, I very much doubt that a major crisis in Asia would not result in the collapse of the US economy (which is fragile anyway).

We should also consider the political consequences of a war on the Korean Peninsula, especially if, as is most likely, South Korea and Japan suffer catastrophic damage. This situation could well result in such an explosion of anti-US feelings that the US would have to pack and leave from the region entirely.

How do you think the PRC feels about such a prospect? Exactly. And might this not explain why the Chinese are more than happy to let the US deal with the North Korean problem knowing full well that one way or another the US will lose without the Chinese having to fire a single shot?

The terrain

Next I want to re-visit a threat which is discussed much more often: North Korean artillery and special forces. But first, I ask you to take a close look at the following three maps of North Korea:

What I want you to see is that the terrain in North Korea is what the military call “mixed terrain”. The topography of North Korea article in Wikipedia actually explains this very well:

The terrain consists mostly of hills and mountains separated by deep, narrow valleys. The coastal plains are wide in the west and discontinuous in the east. Early European visitors to Korea remarked that the country resembled “a sea in a heavy gale” because of the many successive mountain ranges that crisscross the peninsula. Some 80 percent of North Korea’s land area is composed of mountains and uplands, with all of the peninsula’s mountains with elevations of 2,000 metres (6,600ft) or more located in North Korea. The great majority of the population lives in the plains and lowlands.

Being from Switzerland I know this kind of terrain very well (it’s what you would see in the Alpine foothills called “Oberland” or “Préalpes”) and I want to add the following: dense vegetation, forests, rivers and creek with steep banks and rapid currents. Small villages and *a lot* of deep, underground tunnels. There are also flat areas in North Korea, of course, but, unlike Switzerland, they are composed mostly of rice fields and marshes. In military terms this all translates into one simple and absolutely terrifying word: infantry.

Why should the word infantry scare so much? Because infantry means on foot (or horses) with very little airpower (AA and MANPADS), satellites (can’t see much), armor (can’t move around), gunships, submarines or cruise missiles can do. Because infantry means “no lucrative targets” but small, dispersed and very well hidden forces. Company and even platoon-level warfare. Because infantry in mixed terrains means the kind of warfare the Americans fear most.

The adversary

And with that in mind, let’s repeat that besides its huge regular armed forces (about a million soldiers plus another 5 million plus in paramilitary organizations) the DPRK also has 200,000 special forces. Let’s assume that the Western propaganda is, for once, saying the truth and that the regular armed forces are poorly equipped, poorly trained, poorly commanded and even hungry and demotivated (I am not at all sure that this is a fair assumption, but bear with me). But spreading that amount of soldiers all over the combat area would still represent a huge headache, even for “the best and most powerful armed forces in history” especially if you add 200,000 well-trained and highly motivated special forces to the mix (I hope that we can all agree that assuming that special forces are also demotivated would be rather irresponsible). How would you go about finding out who is who and where the biggest threat comes from. And consider this: it would extremely naive to expect the North Korean special forces to show up in some clearly marked DPRK uniforms. I bet you that a lot of them will show up in South Korean uniforms, and others in civilians clothes. Can you imagine the chaos of trying to fight them?

You might say that the North Koreans have 1950s weapons. So what? That is exactly what you need to fight the kind of warfare we are talking about: infantry in mixed terrains. Even WWII gear would do just fine. Now is time to bring in the North Korean artillery. We are talking about 8,600 artillery guns, and over 4,800 multiple rocket launchers (source). Anthony Cordesman estimates that there are 20,000 pieces in the “surrounding areas” of Seoul. That way is more than the US has worldwide (5,312 according to the 2017 “Military Balance”, including mortars). And keep in mind that we are not talking about batteries nicely arranged in a flat desert, but thousands of simple but very effective artillery pieces spread all over the “mixed terrain” filled with millions of roaming men in arms, including 200,000 special forces. And a lot of that artillery can reach Seoul, plenty enough to create a mass panic and exodus.

Think total, abject and bloody chaos

So when you think of a war against North Korea, don’t think “Hunt for Red October” or “Top Gun”. Think total, abject and bloody chaos. Think instant full-scale FUBAR. And that is just for the first couple of days, then things will get worse, much worse. Why?

Because by that time I expect the North Korean Navy and Air Force to have been completely wiped-off, waves after waves of cruise missiles will have hit X number of facilities (with no way whatsoever to evaluate the impact of these strikes but nevermind that) and the US military commanders will be looking at the President with no follow-up plan to offer. As for the North Koreans, by then they will just be settling in for some serious warfare, infantry-style.

There is a better than average chance that a good part of the DPRK elites will be dead. What is sure is that the command and control of the General Staff Department over many of its forces will be if not lost, then severely compromised. But everybody will know that they have been attacked and by whom. You don’t need much command and control when you are in a defensive posture in the kind of terrain were movement is hard to begin with. In fact, this is the kind of warfare where “high command” usually means a captain or a major, not some faraway general.

You might ask about logistics? What logistics I ask you? The ammo is stored nearby in ammo dumps, food you can always get yourself and, besides, its your home turf, the civilians will help.

Again, no maneuver warfare, no advanced communications, no heavy logistical train – we are talking about a kind of war which is much closer to WWII or even WWI than Desert Storm.

[Sidebar: as somebody who did a lot of interesting stuff with the Swiss military, let me add this: this kind of terrain is a battlefield where a single company can stop and hold an entire regiment; this is the kind of terrain where trying to accurately triangulate the position of an enemy radio is extremely hard; this is the kind of terrain where only horses and donkeys can carry heavy gear over narrow, zig-zagging, steep paths; entire hospitals can be placed underground with their entrance hidden by a barn or a shed; artillery guns are dug in underground and fire when a thick reinforced concrete hatch is moved to the side, then they hide; counter-battery radar hardly works due to bouncing signals; radio signals have a short range due to vegetation and terrain; weapon caches and even company size forces camps can only be detected by literally stepping on them; underground bunkers have numerous exits; air-assault operations are hindered by the very high risk of anti-aircraft gunfire or shoulder-fired missiles which can be hidden and come from any direction. I could go on and on but I will just say this: if you want to defeat your adversary in such a terrain there is only one technique which works: you do what the Russians did in the mountains in southern Chechnia during the second Chechen war – you send in your special forces, small units on foot, and you fight the enemy on his own turf. That is an extremely brutal, dangerous and difficult kind of warfare which I really don’t see the Americans doing. The South Koreans, yes, maybe. But here is where the number game also kicks in: in Chechnia the Russians Spetsnaz operated in a relatively small combat zone and they had the numbers. Now look at a map of North Korea and the number of North Korean special forces and tell me – do the South Koreans have the manpower for that kind of offensive operations? One more thing: the typical American reaction to such arguments would be “so what, we will just nuke them!“. Wrong. Nuke them you can, but nukes are not very effective in that kind of terrain, finding a target is hard to begin with, enemy forces will be mostly hidden underground and, finally, you are going to use nukes to deal with company or platoon size units?! Won’t work.]

ORDER IT NOW

If you think that I am trying to scare you, you are absolutely correct. I am. You ought to be scared. And notice that I did not even mention nukes. No, not nuclear warheads in missiles. Basic nuclear devices driven around in common army trucks. Driven down near the DMZ in peacetime amongst thousands of other army trucks and then buried somewhere, ready to explode at the right time. Can you imagine what the effect of a “no-warning” “where did it come from?” nuke might be on advancing US or South Korean forces? Can you imagine how urgent the question “are there any more?” will become? And, again, for that the North Koreans don’t even need a real nuclear weapon. A primitive nuclear device will be plenty.

I can already hear the die-hard “rah-rah-rah we are number 1!!” flag-wavers dismissing it all saying “ha! and you don’t think that the CIA already knows all that?”. Maybe they do and maybe they don’t – but the problem is that the CIA, and the rest of the US intelligence community, has been so hopelessly politicized that it can do nothing against perceived political imperatives. And, frankly, when I see that the US is trying to scare the North Koreans with B-1B and F-22s I wonder if anybody at the Pentagon, or at Langley, is still in touch with reality. Besides, there is intelligence and then there is actionable intelligence. And in this case knowing what the Koreans could do does not at all mean know what to do about it.

Speaking of chaos – do you know what the Chinese specifically said about it?

Let’s talk about the Chinese now. They made their position very clear: “If North Korea launches an attack that threatens the United States then China should stay neutral, but if the United States attacks first and tries to overthrow North Korea’s government China will stop them“. Since there is no chance at all of a unprovoked North Korean attack on the South or the US, especially with this threat by the Chinese to remain neutral if the DPRK attacks first, let’s focus on the 2nd part of the warning.

What could the Chinese do if the US decides to attack North Korea? There basic options depend on the nature of the attack:

If the US limits itself to a combination of missile and airstrikes and the DPRK retaliates (or not), then the Chinese can simply provide technical, economic and humanitarian aid to the DPRK and denounce the US on a political level.

If the US follows up with a land invasion of some kind or if the DPRK decides to retaliate in a manner which would force the US into a land invasion of some kind, then the Chinese could not only offer directly military aid, including military personnel, but they could also wait for the chaos to get total in Korea before opening a 2nd front against US forces (including, possibly, Taiwan).

That second scenario would create a dangerous situation for China, of course, but it would be even far more dangerous for US forces in Asia who would find themselves stretched very thin over a very large area with no good means to force either adversary to yield or stop. Finally, just as China cannot allow the US to crush North Korea, Russia cannot allow the US to crush China. Does that dynamic sound familiar? It should as it is similar to what we have been observing in the Middle-East recently:

Russia->Iran->Hezbollah->Syria

Russia->China->DPRK

This is a very flexible and effective force posture where the smallest element is at the forefront of the line-up and the most powerful one most removed and at the back because it forces the other side to primarily focus on that frontline adversary while maximizing the risks of any possibly success because that success is likely to draw in the next, bigger and more powerful adversary.

Conclusion: preparing for genocide

The US has exactly a zero chance of disarming or, even less so, regime changing the DPRK by only missile and airstrikes. To seriously and meaningfully take the DPRK “in their hands” the US leaders need to approve of a land invasion. However, even if that is not the plan, if the DPRK decides to use its immense, if relatively antiquated, firepower to strike at Seoul, the US will have no choice to move in ground forces across the DMZ. If that happens about 500,000 ROK troops backed by 30,000 US military personnel will face about 1 million North Korea soldiers backed by 5 million paramilitaries and 200,000 special forces on a mix terrain battlefield which will require an infantry-heavy almost WWII kind of military operations. By definition, if the US attacks the DPRK to try to destroy its nuclear program such an attack will begin by missile and air strikes on DPRK facilities meaning that the US will immediately strike at the most valuable targets (from the point of view of the North Koreans of course). This means that following such an attack the US will have little or no dissuasive capabilities left and that means that following such an attack the DPRK will have no incentive left to show any kind of restraint. In sharp contrast, even if the DPRK decides to begin with an artillery barrage across the DMZ, including the Seoul metropolitan area, they will still have the ability to further escalate by either attacking Japan or by setting off a nuclear device. Should that happen there is an extremely high probability that the US will either have to “declare victory and leave” (a time-honored US military tradition) or begin using numerous tactical nuclear strikes. Tactical nuclear strikes, by the way, have a very limited effectiveness on prepared defensive position in mixed terrain, especially narrow valleys. Besides, targets for such strikes are hard to find. At the end of the day, the last and only option left to the US is what they always eventually resort to would be to directly and deliberately engage in the mass murder of civilians to “break the enemy’s will to fight” and destroy the “regime support infrastructure” of the enemy’s forces (another time-honored US military tradition stretching back to the Indian wars and which was used during the Korean war and, more recently, in Yugoslavia). Here I want to quote an article by Darien Cavanaugh in War is Boring:

On a per-capita basis, the Korean War was one of the deadliest wars in modern history, especially for the civilian population of North Korea. The scale of the devastation shocked and disgusted the American military personnel who witnessed it, including some who had fought in the most horrific battles of World War II (…). These are staggering numbers, and the death rate during the Korean War was comparable to what occurred in the hardest hit countries of World War II. (…) In fact, by the end of the war, the United States and its allies had dropped more bombs on the Korean Peninsula, the overwhelming majority of them on North Korea, than they had in the entire Pacific Theater of World War II.

“The physical destruction and loss of life on both sides was almost beyond comprehension, but the North suffered the greater damage, due to American saturation bombing and the scorched-earth policy of the retreating U.N. forces,” historian Charles K. Armstrong wrote in an essay for the Asia-Pacific Journal. “The U.S. Air Force estimated that North Korea’s destruction was proportionately greater than that of Japan in the Second World War, where the U.S. had turned 64 major cities to rubble and used the atomic bomb to destroy two others. American planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea—that is, essentially on North Korea—including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to 503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theatre of World War II.” As Armstrong explains, this resulted in almost unparalleled devastation. “The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.”

Twelve to fifteen percent of the entire population was murdered by US forces in Korea during the last war (compare these figures to the so-called ‘genocide’ of Srebrenica!). That is what Nikki Haley and the psychopaths in Washington DC are really threatening to do when they speak of taking the situation “in their own hands” or, even better, when Trump threatens to “totally destroy” North Korea. What Trump and his generals forget is that we are not in 1950 but in 2017 and that while the Korean War had a negligible economic impact on the rest of the planet, a war the middle of Far East Asia today would have huge economic consequences. Furthermore, in the 1950 the total US control over the mass media, at least in the so-called “free world” made it relatively easy to hide out the murderous rampage by US-led forces, something completely impossible nowadays. The modern reality is that irrespective of the actual military outcome on the ground, any US attack on the DPRK would result is such a massive loss of face for the US that it would probably mark the end of the US presence in Asia and a massive international financial shock probably resulting in a crash of the currently already fragile US economy. In contrast, China would come out as the big winner and the uncontested Asian superpower.

All the threats coming out of US politicians are nothing more than delusional hot air. A country which has not won a single meaningful war since the war in the Pacific and whose Army is gradually being filled with semi-literate, gender-fluid and often conviction or unemployment avoiding soldiers is in no condition whatsoever to threaten a country with the wide choice of retaliatory options North Korea has. The current barrage of US threats to engage in yet another genocidal war are both illegal under international law and politically counter-productive. The fact is that the US is unlikely to be able to politically survive a war against the DPRK and that it now has no other option than to either sit down and seriously negotiate with the North Koreans or accept that the DPRK has become an official nuclear power.

North Korea’s air defenses are so weak that we had to notify them we were flying B1 bombers near their airspace–they didn’t even know our aircraft were coming.

This reminds me of the “fearsome” Republican Guard that Saddam had in the Persian Gulf. Turns out we had total air superiority and just bombed the crap out of them and they surrendered in droves. We have already seen what happens when an army has huge amounts of outdated Soviet weaponry versus the most technologically advanced force in the world. It’s a slaughter.

Also, there has to be weaponry up the USA’s sleeve that would be used in the event of an attack. Don’t forget our cyber warfare abilities that would undoubtedly be implemented as well.

This writer seems to always hype Russia’s capabilities and denigrate the US’s capabilities. Sure, Russia has the capacity to nuke the US into smithereens, and vice versa. But if its a head to head shooting war, the US and NATO would dominate. FACT.

Reading that gives the impression that some sane people really exist in US. What a surprise! But not in a goverment, I’m afraid. Recall just Trump’s brave bombarding of Syrians airport recently and his stupid speaches, McCain with a bad wound of a head, Haleys who tries to prove that she is from that gang …
So all scenarios including the baddiest are possible now. It’s a time to dig a bomb shelter while DPRK , Japan and some other counties exist. Or, of course, to change US which seems to be unreal.

My little brother was pestering one of the school bullies, who was my age (10) at the time and two years older than my little brother, so the bully told me to make him knock it off. After I decked him, my little brother kicked the crap out of him.

I am going to agree with The Saker’s analysis and dismiss whyamihere’s as typical American braggadocio. The inability of US forces to defeat poorly trained and poorly equipped (but superbly motivated and well-led) Third World militias should be a warning. 25 years in Somalia, now fighting the “children” of long-dead Aidid.

However, I believe there is another scenario that works to DPRK’s advantage. Instead of destroying Seoul, capture it, its population, infrastructure and industry intact. All those artillery pieces in the North would be used to crush the South’s defenses. Then, the drive to Seoul is short enough that encirclement and capture might be doable in less than one week. Once Seoul is in the hands of the North, the North can demand a cease fire in place and some sort of negotiated settlement. Neither the South Korean government (assuming it escapes capture) nor Tokyo would permit the kind of US aerial bombardment that leveled so many cities recently in Iraq.

Gen. Keane (Ret.), the somewhat lunatic former Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army, this morning admitted on Fox that Kim wants security for his family and regime, and if we could convince him we won’t attack he would be amenable to negotiations. Of course, that is exactly what the US cannot guarantee, although if South Korea, Japan, China and Russia were to cosign any agreement, and if Russian and Chinese troops were put on the DMZ, then Kim might believe.

I would like to add that at the heart of America’s bravado about “totally destroying” DPRK, is a most grotesque and dehumanizing racism against non-Caucasians. If the DPRK is totally destroyed, then so will be ROK and all Koreans on the peninsula, not to mention likely significant casualties among the bordering Chinese and Russians.

In the light of Eurangloland’s deep seated, pathological racism against all dark skinned peoples, the US’s blatant use of bioweapons during the Korean War*, with its repeated, genocidal carpet bombing of the North makes perfect sense.

-It isn’t the middle eastern desert in Iraq where the landscapes provide an excellent effectiveness to the air campaign of the US.

-In the event of hostilities the falls of Seoul’s economically and overall functions is assured and unpreventable.

-Victory would be unachievable by submission or by the decapitation of their upper echelons.

-There’s a big chances of China or Russian intervention that may or may not end the hostilities but undoubtedly make a good political reason to bring the NK into their geopolitical enclosure and design.

-There would be unpleasant surprise in the form of unconventional delivery of nuclear/chemical/biological weapons.

-It will undoubtedly upset the global economy.

-Lastly and most importantly it is politically unsurvivable. The aftermath wouldn’t be US triumph over a rogue state but worldwide condemnations of their policy and lost of Allies in the east Asia.

Have you read the article? You are totally ignoring the different theaters, you can’t compare Iraq (mostly a desert) with mountainous North Korea. In a desert, tanks and large troop concentration are completely exposed to aviation attacks once air superiority is lost, which happened within days since the start of Desert Storm. North Korea doesn’t need to ensure air superiority to protect its ground troops.
Cyberwarfare isn’t of much use against a country which is poor, undeveloped and mostly disconnected from the internet.

Just stop provoking the DPRK all the time with threatening military exercises held on their borders. It’s obviously intended to intimidate them. The US has also constantly threatened to nuke them ever since the end of the war there so it’s hardly a surprise that they’ve developed their own nuclear deterrent. The US could never think far enough ahead to see that it’s belligerence would have consequences or that the nuclear monopoly couldn’t last. It’s just a fact that they’ve become a noisy entrant to the nuclear club. To normalize things it would be best to simply accept reality and sign a peace treaty and then a non-aggression pact with them, lift all sanctions and actually open them up for trade. The current environment of threats are on a dead-end street. This article points out how all this bluffing can’t go anywhere. Haley is a blabbering idiot and should be removed. For some strange reason the US has had embarrassing clowns as UN representatives for many years now.

The article frames the real world situation and potential outcomes of a U.S attack on North Korea very well. Specifically, the economic and political ramifications would be far-reaching, and possibly paradigm shifting in regards to the balance of power in the Pacific.

Frankly, the U.S military does not have the man power or capability, in terms of infantry, to fight the kind of war it would need to in order to overthrow the current regime that rules North Korea. Take that fact, and add it to the reality that such regime change and a military occupation of the country would be the only way to actually coerce disarmament or to prevent further development of nuclear weapons by the North. Sanctions, and the hot-air bluster of Washington won’t do it.

Most Americans, I think, would not really approve of a first strike on North Korea, much less yet another aggressive war of choice that would likely reap much higher casualties for American soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors than the last twenty years of war in the greater Middle-East. However, Americans have exactly as much to say in whether their government goes to war as the people of Germany did in 1939. The congress has completely ceded all of it’s power in that regard to the executive branch. Donald Trump can sent U.S forces to war at any time, anywhere around the globe, for any reason. Just like Obama, and Bush, and Clinton, and daddy Bush, and…well, you get the picture.

Of course, while most Americans might not gladly embrace another war, neither would they care much about it so long as it did not impact their day to day lives. The wars of my lifetime (I’m a child of the 80s) all fall into that category. Unless you knew some poor bastard in the military who got killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, or Africa, those conflicts haven’t impacted your life outside of the taxes and monetary debasement the government uses to fund its little adventures.

Sad as it is-should the U.S government launch a war against North Korea, or anyone else, it might be better for the country in the long run for it to be a clear, decisive defeat. Maybe then the cult worship of military power in Washington, and by much of the population, would finally pass away. Maybe then we could again be a republic that seeks peace, trade, and honest friendship with the world.

So when the dire W announced that North Korea was part of the Axis of Evil, the Pentagon did nothing effective to prepare for a war against her? That sounds about par for the course.

Not only did the US fail to turn Iraq into the Switzerland of the Middle East, the US paid off various warlords to let her withdraw her army without further attacks on it. And still there are fools who reckon it a victory.

It’s not just the Saker but common knowledge that the DPRK has a fearsome capacity to devastate Seoul with conventional artillery in response to any US attack, and the Saker specifically pointed out that they likely have the ability to destroy the global economy by devastating central Japan even if one takes the most conservative view of the actual state of their nuclear and missile programs.

The discussion by the Saker of the ramifications of a potential land invasion is interesting and worth exploring, though one hopes that it is hopelessly hypothetical even in the eyes of actual US military planners, like Cordesman’s.

Steve Bannon admitted even before he left the White House, that North Korea, had already effectively blocked the US “military option”. Hopefully others such as McMaster are equally clear headed about this in private despite posturing in public.

I noticed the Saker used the term “hot air” near the end, as did Justin Raimondo in his penultimate column (“The curtain rises on Trump theater”, Dec 6, 2017), regarding the Trump Administration’s public threats. No doubt those threats are reprehensible in their own right, and we need to take seriously the possibility that they could lead to war. But I definitely recommend balancing this perspective with the more optimistic takes of Raimondo and Peter Lee (at least until recently) in our efforts to discover what is really happening.

There’d be no war on Korea peninsula. Threatening North Korea is just a means to create tension in order to drive capital from China, Japan, South Korea back to the US, to hold up the already dangerously over valued asset market. And there will likely be some other moves to create more tension in the region too. This is an economic warfare, not a military one.

The miserable North Korea really really want to give up their nukes. It’s the US who doesn’t want it. Clinton signed some agreement with them to give up, then Bush became president and he broke it; Bush signed some agreement with NK again, then Obama broke it.

Objective: Regime change in DPRK.
Enemy: As Saker described, more or less. Emphasize on outdated equipment and lack of training.
Troops: More or less what’s in the theater now.
Terrain: As Saker described; focus on DMZ (threat to Seul/South Korea by conventional artillery).
Time/weather: As Saker described more or less.

Commander’s intent: Decapitate the top leadership and remove retaliatory capability.

“break the enemy’s will to fight” and destroy the “regime support infrastructure”

Execution:
Phase one:
Massive missile/bombing campaign (including carpet) of top leadership locations, tactical missile locations and DMZ artillery belt. Destruction of surface fleet and air force.
Phase two:
Advance into DMZ artillery belt up to a range of 240 mm cannon. Not further (local tactical considerations taken into account of course).
Phase three:

“break the enemy’s will to fight” and destroy the “regime support infrastructure”

At the heart of the bravado is the greed of the Jew. In the eyes of the Jew and his collaborators, all the goyim are sub-human. The Jew will sacrifice the lives of Europeans and americans to destroy asians, use asians and africans and central americans to dispossess and destroy Europeans and americans, all to preserve his monetary control of the world. Of course you would lay this at the feet of white Americans, but the only one suffering from a dangerous pathology is you, schlomo

This silly article ignores the obvious……THERE IS ZERO CHANCE OF ANY KOREAN WAR. Nothing in it for the bloodthirsty conniving jooies, so why would they waste their US colony’s assets murdering asians when they could be used to further destroy the ME and then Persia?

Sounds so simple. How’s this working in Afghanistan? Are the Taliban ready to throw in the towel after 16 years? The North Koreans may be as easily unimpressed with American power as the Afghan natives. Then what?

Saker’s normally great work has been tarnished with this crappy article. Why does anyone think one of the world’s poorest nation can overrun one of the world’s most advanced that has twice its population? Here is a part of what I wrote in 2003:

“North Korean soldiers suffer from malnutrition and rarely train due to a scarcity of fuel and ammo. Most North Korean soldiers could not attack because they are needed to defend the entire DMZ and coastal approaches (they remember the 1950 landing at Inchon) while entire divisions must remain throughout North Korea to fend off heliborne offensives, food riots, and probable coups.

On the other hand, the entire 700,000 man South Korean active duty army can be devoted to the defense of Seoul. The modern South Korean army is backed by over 5,000,000 well-trained reservists who can be called to duty in hours. South Korea has twice the population of the North, thirty times its economic power, and spends three times more on its military each year. South Korean military equipment is first class whereas most of the North Korean military equipment is over 30 years old and much is inoperable due to a lack of maintenance. If war broke out, South Korea has a massive industrial capacity and $94 billion in foreign currency reserves to sustain a war, while North Korea has no industry and no money. As a result, South Korea is roughly five times more powerful than North Korea.

If North Korea insanely attacked, the South Koreans would fight on mountainous and urban terrain which heavily favors defense, and complete air superiority would shoot up anything the North Koreans put on the road. Assuming the North Koreans could start up a thousand of their old tanks and armored vehicles, they cannot advance through the mountainous DMZ. The South Koreans have fortified, mined, and physically blocked all avenues through these mountains, and it would take North Korean infantry and engineers weeks to clear road paths while under fire.

The North Korean military could gain a few thousand meters with human wave assaults into minefields and concrete fortifications. However, these attacks would bog down from heavy casualties, and a lack of food and ammo resupply.”

And North Korea was much weaker when I wrote this 2014 article that notes:

“South Korea has twice the population, 50 times the economic power, and a modern military that is roughly five times stronger than the decrepit North Korean Army. In addition, South Korea has fortified and mined its mountainous border region along the DMZ (pictured) so no vehicles can pass.

A North Korean offensive across the DMZ would result in a World War I style slaughter of North Korean infantry within a few miles of the border. The mobilized South Korean army is five times larger than the mob of uniformed rice farmers just north of the DMZ. South Korea would easily win any war with the North, which teeters on economic collapse during peacetime.

That article explains the greatest threat to Koreans are US Army Generals and their greedy warmongering. A war would be a huge mess, but not the disaster expected. Lots or bad press cite the thousands of North Korean artillery systems along the DMZ, but only a few hundred have the range to reach Seoul.

The North Korean threat ruse has robbed Americans of a trillion dollars over the years, and Trump and his Generals are milking it for more, hence the massive military spending increase this year all justified by the old bogus North Korean threat. Trump just signed this spending bill, so now Tillerson says we can begin peace talks.

Yet we should worry, but not about North Korea, but Trump and his mad Generals. Most Americans agree with the logic of President Lyndon Johnson who said in 1964 that he was “not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing themselves.” If South Koreans are unwilling to defend their nation from poverty stricken cousins from the North, why should Americans defend them? The USA imports no vital resources from Korea; the consumer items imported from South Korea are readily available elsewhere.

And this finale, from my blog:

Mar 2014 Update – South Korea Slashes Military Manpower

Despite constant media stories about the North Korean threat, South Korea will cut its active duty military from 640,000 to 522,000 by 2022, citing the country’s declining birth rate as the reason for the downsizing. According the CIA Factbook, South Korea has almost 11 million men fit for military duty, so the “declining birthrate” excuse to downsize and cut costs is absurd. South Korea spends roughly half as much of its GDP on national defense compared to the USA and its economy continues rapid growth as it surpasses the USA in many areas of technology — ever hear of Samsung? Most Americans would be outraged by these facts, which is why they never appear in our major corporate media.

It’s just a fact that they’ve become a noisy entrant to the nuclear club. To normalize things it would be best to simply accept reality and sign a peace treaty and then a non-aggression pact with them, lift all sanctions and actually open them up for trade.

That’s obviously true

Haley is a blabbering idiot and should be removed. For some strange reason the US has had embarrassing clowns as UN representatives for many years now.

That’s true, too.
Just one mistake – clouws not only in UN, currenly all top levels of US administration is a one big circus.
Taking that in mind we can understand that your 1st proposal is unreal. Those clowns will understand only when their’s own house will burn. And yes, currently when NK’s rockets got better, they have a chance to test NK’s nukes.

why would they waste their US colony’s assets murdering asians when they could be used to further destroy the ME and then Persia?

Cause they are stupid, aren’t they? After all will the war start or not depends not only on US, but some of you can’t see the simple thing – there are many other countries and people in the world.
And provoking NK with exesises near border as stupid as expanding NATO to Russia borders.

Given the roster of Jewish diversity on the boards of Lockheed, Boeing and the rest, each serving on the boards of the others and the sheer numbers throughout the government, I don’t know what anyone expected. To these folks, this war, the next war, any war, is a good war. It’s not THEIR children fighting, what do they care? With each bomb dropped, each cruise missile launched, each expensive gallon of JP burned, profit. And they get paid whether they win or lose. War is their business, they own the media to beat the drums of war and they pay good money to Congressmen, Senators and Generals at the revolving doors to ensure the wars keep coming to a theater near you. These financial and other obligatory ties back to Israel are not coincidences.

Until the wars don’t appeal to the greed, or until there’s a draft that draws THEIR children in, this shit keeps on coming. Like I said, win, lose or especially, draw (they love draws, even after cessations of hostilities, they’ll keep bombing, keep flying) the dough just keeps rolling in. These aren’t Dollar-A-Year men we’re talking about. A third of Lockheed’s dollars go straight to the boards and investors and stock holders, lots more to fund campaigns. A million dollars to each member of Congress is nothing to these people and once you take it they OWN you. With the end of the wars, if they saw the profits drain out somehow, everyone could go home and learn to build cars and televisions instead of ingenious ways to kill people. Its the money, follow the money, the incentives and payoffs from the entire system in DC that keeps it rolling, Jews are completely and utterly at the bottom of it all. They run the think tanks, they pay off our Capitol Hill, our Generals, they populate our Congress and corrupt it from the inside. From State to Justice, the Courts, the Media greasing the skids for the War Machine, Jews working the system, keeping it going. Sorry, like Larry David, we notice.

War is stupid, and the people who promote it are doing evil.
Korea is in China’s sphere of influence, not ours.
Any missile that could hit Hawaii could hit Beijing a lot faster.
This is not our problem.
War is stupid.

Any agreement Russia signs isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Russia is a signatory to the Budapest Agreement, yet Putin invaded Crimea and the Donbas. Russia can’t be trusted as long as Putin, or any other idiot like him is still in charge.

The probability of the Norks capturing Seoul is nil. They can do a lot of damage to it with their longer range artillery pieces, but beyond destroying, they have little ability to take anything.

Kim wants the south under his regime. It would matter little what kind of agreement were signed, the little man would continue what his father and grandfather did for years.

“B1 bombers near their airspace–they didn’t even know our aircraft were coming.”

This is based on what? I call BS on that. B1s are not even stealthy at all. NK has a massive AA-network, with probably a similarily massive number of radars. B1 is a huge target. (Or are you talking about the B2, can’t even get that right, lol?)

The most important thing: (North) Koreans are not Arabs/Iraqis. Don’t compare those two, period. Iraqis should have been able to inflict over 10,000 casualties on the US easily, and if they had been… well, Koreans or Vietnamese, with exactly the same equipment btw, that’s exactly what would have happened. The wars against Iraq were outliers (or even Israel vs. Arabs), so they actually didn’t show anything.

It took months to concentrate enough forces to actually invade Iraq during both of those wars. How many planes, how many ships, how many troops would be available to the US vs. NK, at the start of the conflict? Sure, SK ground forces would have sufficient forces to defend most of its own territory, but they would still need US help to bomb and invade NK.

Also, as already mentioned: totally different terrains.

North Korea can’t be taken out without very considerably casualties. That was actually the point of the article. And there’s no way around it.

You are totally wrong on Russia as well. Maybe we should bean count dollars… how many US dollars each country spends on its military, that is so accurate, right? It isn’t. Geography is very important, distances, logistics. Russia would have the upper-hand east of Western Poland, especially at first.

Many large NATO countries also have a very questionable state of military readiness… A very large share of German Air Force’s inventory is unable to fly as an example and Germany has like 100 operational tanks, IIRC. How is that possible? They spend $40 billion on their military every year, they are supposed to be the largest economy in Europe, one of the strongest military in NATO… Russia must be so scared.

People must realize that there are two different scenarios, three really, and they would have 2 or 3 very different outcomes: 1. Russia trying to invade Germany (true, Russia wouldn’t be able to do that, that much is of course obvious, but that scenario is totally irrelevant and ridiculous anyway), 2. a war in the Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine and 3. an actual invasion of Russia. Most people seem to think that wars are fought in a vacuum, that logistics don’t matter and that the US military has invulnerable and unlimited logistical and power projection capabilities. While they are by far the strongest in the world, especially when it comes to the Navy, they are still very far from unlimited, against a serious opponent. They are probably also smaller and relatively weaker than they were back in 2003.

The US would, for example, have massive problems trying to invade two medium sized countries with modest militaries simultaneously (NK is hardly a middle sized country militarily), let alone only invading a country like Iran, despite it on paper being MUCH stronger than those two (or 3, or 4, or 5…) countries combined (or Iran, or even NK) on paper. They have openly admitted as much.

I guess an American attack on North Korea would consist of preemptive strategic nuking to destroy the entire country before it can do anything. Since North Korea itself contributes essentially nothing to the world economy, no one would lose money.

Uncle Sam would, so to say, pull a Stalin: one North Korea, one problem; no North Korea, no problem.

Here is the most important point.
Xi declared: IF NORTH KOREA IS ATTACKED WE WILL COME TO NORTH KOREAN HELP.
Now lets take it in reverse!
If North Korea is under umbrella of Chinese, and possible Russian nuclear weapons.
Why North Korea needs nuclear weapons?

Something is telling me that North Korea here is the possible aggressor.

NK has a massive AA-network, with probably a similarily massive number of radars.

Wrong.
Not massive and on top of it the equipment is old with bad maintenance. On top of that is lack of proper training.
Their “AA-network” won’t bother US/allies one bit.

North Korea can’t be taken out without very considerably casualties. That was actually the point of the article. And there’s no way around it.

Wrong.
The invasion, again, up to a range of MLRS, shouldn’t be a problem. Not more than around 70 Kms. That area is reconnoitered in a minute detail. US/allies air power will reduce all the threat there with no problem.
Ground forces attack, actually sweep/clear of that region will be just a good live firing exercise.
In essence, finishing of positions, bunkers, shelters etc.
Effectively engineering/DEMOLITIONS work.

As for the rest of North Korea, I agree with considerable casualties. Their military, and civilian population, will simply be massacred.

Actually, all this…”conversation”…is perverse.

Take….a…..look…..at the official North Korean propaganda videos about their military/defense capabilities. It’s scary how those people are, actually, in terrible shape.

Yes, I know that amateurs/civilians have problem seeing that, but I guarantee you that any professional, looking at those videos, can’t believe his eyes.
I’ve seen plenty of those recently just to keep up to date and it IS scary.

The level of LACK of training is just terrible. On top of it they are stuck in 70s, tops, with their military thinking. Let’s not even talk about weapons/equipment.

I actually feel sorry for these people.

It’s ….surreal….to see that fat pig “overseeing” maneuvers/exercises and those poor people, lining up for slaughter, adulate him.

Imagining those people, in such capability, facing US/allies military might is….just…. perverse.

One more thing. These people haven’t been under fire since ’56.
All they “know” about war is from that, surreal, propaganda.
All their perception of reality is……..just….one big delusion.

The only, interesting, unknown thing is how long that delusion will last under that death and destruction from skies.

All this feels as a perverse experiment.

The only sensible option is murdering that fat bastard and his closest circle of sycophants and putting some sense into that regime.

I could envisage, with ease, a joint China-US operation along those lines.

All else will be a terrible tragedy. True, the pig and his circle will be killed, but with them untold number of those brainwashed peasants.

The reason we are in such deep shit is the idiotic notion of regime change in places like DPRK, Syria, Iran, etc. Who are those in “the West” – more appropriately (((the West)))- too tell people in other countries, who their leaders should be and/or what political systems they should have. Would you tolerate someone who is visiting your neighbourhood, to tell you who should be in charge of your family or how your family should be structured? NONE OF OUR EFFING BUSINESS

And yet Johnson did thousands he sent into the meat grinder known as Vietnam only to see more and more come back in body bags, and Korea would be no different while the onlookers sit by with their rah rah rah’s…

The US also signed the Budapest document then organized a coup to overthrow the legitimate government of Ukraine. Since the US breached this agreement there was no longer an agreement for Russia to violate.

[This is your final warning to pick a single Handle and stick to it, or use Anonymous/Anon. Otherwise, all your future comments will be trashed, hardly much of a loss since they’re generally worthless.]

You got me….
To answer it with a modicum of decency I’d need to play war games. Hopefully with a couple of guys.
It would take, for a basic and probably quite inaccurate, estimate, a week of full time work, at least.
If such work done in the War College it would be an instant “student failure.”

So…can’t do it I am afraid.
That’s why I say “you got me”.

At the other hand, be assured, those games have been played for quite some time all over the place.
In fact, one, in real, is being played as we speak with those carriers and such.

If interested you can read about such things, abridged for public consumption, from the First Iraqi War to the IDF/Hezbollah clash.
Wesley Clarke “Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat” could, probably, be very good too. I mean, Kosovo example, parts of it and, again, methodology wise.

Bottom line, that’s a very smart stuff, done by the best of military/political minds.
Nobody at this site, make no mistake, is on that level.
Nobody.

A couple of guys, perhaps, could be some minor assistants in some areas. Errand boys. Me included.

Having said that, well, here are my, really, 2 cents.

The “strike” (option 3) would consist of several phases.
The first, most important, would be an attempt to decapitate the leadership and CiC of their, possible, nuclear capability. That shouldn’t/wouldn’t last more than a day, I believe. I guess that MOAB and similar stuff would be used in numbers there. Bunker busters etc. Everything except nukes.
At the same time we would see a suppression of that “artillery/MSR” belt capable of reaching Seul.
Should the current regime get replaced with a sensible one (pure China satellite in fact) all stops here.

The next phase would be destroying that “artillery/MSLR” belt and suppression of tactical missile capability capable of reaching Seul. At the same time destruction of their air force offensive capability.
That could take a week, I guess. Again, MOABs, bunker busters, carpet bombing…everything except nukes.
Should the current regime get replaced with a sensible one (pure China satellite in fact) all stops here.

The next phase would be an advance into the “artillery/MSLR” belt, say, up to around 70 kms into North Korean territory.
This depends on a lot of variables, but, I guess, it could take a week, two tops.
Should the current regime get replaced with a sensible one (pure China satellite in fact) all stops here.

The next phase would be that “break the enemy’s will to fight” and, well, that is a HUGE unknown.
Any time during that phase “should the current regime get replaced with a sensible one (pure China satellite in fact) all stops there.”
Option one: Saipan/Okinawa. I, personally, doubt that.
Option two: total collapse of society. I, personally, believe this is quite possible. A mass run into China plus chaos in North Korea proper.
The…mice…I mean, people, there would, most likely, just got their perception of reality shattered.

How would that unravel, well, I think that is the most interesting element of all this.
Time wise, well….anything between a week and two months, I guess. Really guess.
This depends of tempo of destruction and collapse of organized society.
The real unknown here.

I actually believe that China would step into that.
I mean, I can envisage Chinese troops advancing up to that line where US/allies troops are (say, around 70 km from the current border/that MSLR “threat” line).
Advance into that chaos and impose some organized society.

There will be no war that’s simply U.S. propaganda South Korea wants to be part of the One belt,one road and North Korea will have to be included, and South Korea is moving closer and closer to the China/Russia duo for that’s where the trade is and will be in the future,and speaking of agreements we won’t go there for we haven’t kept ANY agreement we ever made going clear back to the French and Indian War,as the ex-president of Pakistan said “the whole world knows that the word of the U.S. is no good” and that my friend says it all…

“Eurangloland’s deep seated, pathological racism against all dark skinned peoples” is a load of crap. I know. I have lived here all my life, except for a hitch in the army, and I still live here. It’s my country.

Why does US need Nuclear weapons/ Why does US have to butt into Korean business?
Why does a silent ongoing unhappy situation has to be faced with aggressive postures and not met with diplomatic maneuver? US did rekindle the problems in Bush Cheney era and now again under Trump’s we see same

NK doenst believe that China will help it always

It has decided to help itself may be US will request China not to help NK when and if it attacks NK pre emptively.

You have to get this out of your mind that US has some kind of duty or right or responsibility to save other country for the sake of helping without invitation . The world has seen the subterfuge and excuses that hide US duplicity and the world doesn’t want the US ‘s help or presence

As I shall point out in my next comment, we have legitimately inherited the Korea problem. Soldiers of the ROK have fought bravely and often died along side ours. We have made mistakes but we cannot thereby claim to be released from obligations of honor.

As for your (((the West))) — that is currently secretly in an arrangement with Beijing, which in turn is secretly in an arrangement with Pyongyang. It’s all about the difference between us (US) and (((the West))). Can’t you see that? It’s time to do something different.

BTW: we are no more involved in regime change in the DPRK than we are in the PRC. it’s all a distraction. And yes, of course, we need a regime change in our own country (singular, not plural). In the long run, the DPRK is bound for regime change just as was East Germany, until the wall came down, but we don’t have to do it.

Two buddies, both recently left the Army after 25 plus years both E8’s. One was special forces, the other Army intel. My one buddies Green Beret’s battalion had been assigned an area of interest, which was Korea. He regularly participated in War Games etc. in South Korea. Now that he’s out I’ve asked him about it. This highly trained, motivated and decorated soldier who had several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan said full scale war with NK scared the shit out of him. My other buddy spent his last years prior to retirement also in Korea, asked the same question and he responded, I’m really really glad I’m out.

FYI they both hated Korea as the Koreans are much more strict about civilian interaction with the U.S. military as opposed to other countries they visited or were deployed too. In other words much less fun, brothel activity limited.

The cat is out of the bag. South Korea and Japan will probably get nukes themselves pretty soon. That is the inevitable consequence of the belligerent little buffer state known as North Korea getting them. The same thing will happen in the middle east. Once Iran gets a bomb, the Saudi’s will buy them from Pakistan. Saker, you are right about the Chinese and the Russians sitting back and laughing at the US but my guess is that they won’t be laughing when the Japs get em. He who laughs last, laughs best.

“One more thing. These people haven’t been under fire since ’56.All they “know” about war is from that, surreal, propaganda.
All their perception of reality is……..just….one big delusion.”

There are people in North Korea who have parents and grand parents and great grand parents who experienced the war and no doubt these parents and grand parents and great grand parents shared their experiences with their descendants. These experiences aren’t a delusion. If the state propaganda supports what is related in these personal accounts, then that isn’t a delusion either.

You assume way more than the facts present,no nukes will fly, Iran dosen’t want the bomb the Korea’s would have been re-united years ago if we had kept our noses out of their affairs, which of course is and always has been our greatest failure and that is minding our own business while others mind theirs.
Very good artical on The Duran on this very subject(of why nukes won’t fly) I suggest that you read it rather than the war mongering propaganda about other nations……

Thanks for commenting, Grandpa Charlie. We can respectfully disagree. My thousands of hours of research and a lifetime of empirical experiences around the world tell me otherwise, but I realize that among Westerners, your position is in the majority.

You might want to read my China Trilogy, blog or the other books I recommended here in the comments section, as a challenge to your point of view.

I have posted at many or most of the articles focused on Korea here at UR. I have collided with Leftist comments that seek to blame it all on the USA. Some even seek to blame the partition along the 38th Parallel on FDR, going back three quarters of a century to the Tehran Conference and the Yalta Conference. The historical record is otherwise:

In November 1943, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek met at the Cairo Conference to discuss what should happen to Japan’s colonies, and agreed that Japan should lose all the territories it had conquered by force. In the declaration after this conference, Korea was mentioned for the first time. The three powers declared that they were, “mindful of the enslavement of the people of Korea, … determined that in due course Korea shall become free and independent.” Roosevelt floated the idea of a trusteeship over Korea, but did not obtain agreement from the other powers. Roosevelt raised the idea with Stalin at the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Stalin did not disagree, but advocated that the period of trusteeship be short.

At the Tehran Conference and the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union promised to join its allies in the Pacific War in two to three months after victory in Europe, On August 8, 1945, three months to the day after the end of hostilities in Europe, and two days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Soviet troops advanced rapidly, and the US government became anxious that they would occupy the whole of Korea. On August 10, 1945 two young officers – Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel – were assigned to define an American occupation zone. Working on extremely short notice and completely unprepared, they used a National Geographic map to decide on the 38th parallel. They chose it because it divided the country approximately in half but would place the capital Seoul under American control. …To the surprise of the Americans, the Soviet Union immediately accepted the division. The agreement was incorporated into General Order No.1 (approved on 17 August 1945) for the surrender of Japan.

Articles made other false and misleading claims about Korea, as follows:

1. That the Korean War was instigated by USA and that the United States Army caused Syngman Rhee to perpetrate crimes against humanity against Korean people. Also it has been regularly asserted that the Army wrongfully interfered in the democratic functioning of the ROK. Also, it has been wrongfully claimed that American soldiers have treated Koreans, including ROK soldiers — their comrades in arms — badly because of anti-Asian prejudices which have been wrongfully associated with all American soldiers — which in itself is a statement of prejudice against both black and white Americans.. It has also been claimed that the ROK and japan are “vassals” of the USA, which uses those two allies cynically and without regard for their sovereignty as nations and members of the United Nations, and, that it treats them as ‘colonies’ to be economically exploited.

2. That the USA and the UN have refused to negotiate peace with the DPRK, which allegedly has been offered to them by DPRK on terms that it would be unreasonable for USA and the UN to refuse. That the USA has been obstinate in dealing with the DPRK so as to prevent peace, and carpet bombed North Korea for reasons other than, as it has explained, to force leaders of the DPRK to engage in peace and reunification talks, which they have refused to do. (In fact, it is DPRK that has refused the UN call for elections in the North and has never honestly cooperated in peace negotiations.)

3. Even now, DPRK pretends to be inviting USA and the ROK to participate in talks providing that USA and the ROK first comply with preconditions that USA must exit Korea and that the ROK must surrender its right to control its own border defenses. Such demands can only remind the world of demands regularly made by Israel — as preconditions if it is to engage in “negotiations” with the Palestinians. The DPRK protests that USA threatens the peace of Asia, even though it is the DPRK and its covert partner, the PRC, that maintain a secret treaty alliance — through Mossad agents — with Israel.

I do not pretend that USA has made no mistakes in its Korea policies over the past three quarters of a century, but it is time for all parties to stop the provocations (including President Trump). The way for USA tp proceed is to set the ROK on point and proclaim that we will back them up, meaning if the ROK says to nuke Pyongyang or the nuclear weapons facilities, then so be it: that’s what we will do. It won’t come to that because once Kim Jong-un sees that he has no choice but to talk to a real popularly elected Korean (which Kim isn’t) he will realize he is nothing bit a pudgy emperor who has lost his clothes.

The Saker is a lot more correct than incorrect here. NK, Kim, has no incentive to first strike.

I believe Saker and many others overstated the capability of NK artillery to devastate Seoul. Only a few of the biggest rockets and tubes can reach the city itself from the northern edge of the DMZ, the tubes only with extended range rounds. It is not clear NK has any significant number of ER rounds, and the big artillery is extremely vulnerable to counterattack.

The nuclear option, in a scenario where the NK leadership sees itself and much of the country being destroyed and releases a mutual destruction strike, is the scary one. The most effective strike would be to burn up much of Japan, creating a nuclear winter scenario. (I prefer the term nuclear twilight. It is not a decrease in temperature that would severely damage northern hemisphere agriculture, but a lack of adequate sunlight.) That could kill tens or hundreds of millions all over the world, and would likely break up NATO politically.

Since the US breached this agreement there was no longer an agreement for Russia to violate.

An argument I thought I was alone in making. Thank you.
There is a secondary argument that maintains that as the post-coup government was in no way legitimate, ipso facto Crimea did not have a country to secede from. The duly constituted and UN recognized country of Ukraine had, de jure ceased to exist when the legitimate government was chased from its post under threat of violence. Given its special status in both the USSR and then in the post-Soviet collapse Ukraine as The Autonomous Republic of Krimea, which it had since Soviet times, it acted on its prerogative to perfect its autonomy.
In addition to the internationally recognized legal principle of the right to self-determination, it had every i dotted, and every t crossed to legally do what it did.

In contrast, Donbas did not, and so its independence referendum was rejected by the Kremlin.

No matter how “bad” China is in this Korea business, we already said “no war”. The “noble” US can threaten war all you want, but there will be no war. China is going to win this hand.

And Mr. Jeff Brown is right, Westerners have no mercy for Asian people. The Americans wanted to drop 20+ atomic bombs on our eastern coast. The Russians threatened to nuke us too. The US and the SU is about the same degree noble, because both could no doubt come up with perfectly good reasons to tell the public why we should be nuked.

“It’s also possible they (the North Koreans) will simply dissolve…………tyrannies tend to do that when ..

Sure they will dissolve, like they did in the first Korean war. Or like the “Eyerakees” (Iraqis) welcomed the US army, or like …. the list is long, but people just don’t learn. And tyranny lies in invading countries and killing civilians, not on the defending side.

Well, it’s obvious to anyone with a brain: the US never attacks anyone with WMD. The very fact that the US invaded Iraq or lobbed Tomahawks at Syria shows that the US was 100% sure that they did not have WMD.
The bluff with NK is just that, pure bluff. Aircraft carriers sail back and forth, sometimes drowning a plane, but the war rages mostly in Twitter, where Un and Trump, like kindergarten kids, call each other perfectly true and applicable names. This would have been funny if it weren’t so sad.

Vietnam comes to mind! Technology versus determined and vengeful people. I was in Korea deployed and even the south Koreans dislike us! Lets mind our own business, and let others live as they please will go a long way to avoid this sort of war mongering. Lets leave that to McCain and his handlers, and other warmongers, the neu cons, who had never put on a uniform and go and fight the wars they so desperately want others to fight ‘their’ wars.

You were? Recently?
Sounds great.
Maybe you could give us some insights here, please.

I guess you were a trooper/NCO.
So, when you had briefings about North Korea’s armed forces capabilities, what were the officers saying?
Like, did they compare training standards? Just up to a company level: leadership, fitness, marksmanship, small unit tactics and such, especially in night fighting.
Like “we have, as you know, this amount of ammo for basic/advanced/continuation training etc..etc”.
Compared to that they have……”.
Or, like “we, as you know, put a great emphasize on junior leadership and their initiative; compared to that they…etc..etc”.
Or, general combat estimate.
Like…”when you compare our infantryman/fireteam/squad/platoon/company to theirs we think we are better/worse in this/that”.
You know how it works.

So…what they were saying?
Or it’s OPSEC/PERSEC and we just don’t want to go there?

No matter how “bad” China is in this Korea business, we already said “no war”. The “noble” US can threaten war all you want, but there will be no war. China is going to win this hand.

And Mr. Jeff Brown is right, Westerners have no mercy for Asian people. The Americans wanted to drop 20+ atomic bombs on our eastern coast. The Russians threatened to nuke us too. The US and the SU is about the same degree noble …

— Yee

Yee,

What I have done is to recount some history that many Americans do not know, and that exposes the reality that Kim is not in any way offering to honestly negotiate … but you as a representative of the China Communist Party, consider that all history is propaganda.

When you confidently say “no war” and know that the DPRK will not start war, that’s acknowledging that the PRC controls the DPRK and that it’s a charade whenever the DPRK and Kim pretend to be independent. Thank you for that, because I certainly do not want war … and therefore I want to see the USA return to its pre-2000 policy to vigorously pursue a global disarmament policy, especially regarding nuclear weapons. Similarly, when you say ‘no war” and know that neither the ROK nor USA/UN will start war, that’s acknowledging that PRC’s nuclear umbrella extends over North Korea and thus the argument that Kim needs nukes to defend himself is another charade. Similarly, the pretense that Kim is seriously threatened by annual joint exercises, or that ROK/USA/UN is in any sense an aggressive strike force, is another charade, a sham, a pretense. Thank you for helping me to make those points, because so many of the comments here are predicated on the bad joke that Kim is in any sense independent of the PRC.

Now, this comes down to asking you a question: what are your references when you say “Westerners have no mercy for Asian people. The Americans wanted to drop 20+ atomic bombs on our eastern coast. The Russians threatened to nuke us too. The US and the SU … ” What time period are you talking about? Are you going back to the time when Russia was part of the USSR … the time when USSR and China were on the outs but that all turned out to be a misunderstanding, and nuclear exchanges were avoided by restoration of communication between Moscow and Beijing through intermediary efforts of Japanese Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda in contact with Zhou Enlai?

Anyway, if as you and Brown claim, we Americans in this the 21st Century are filled with hatred for and despise people from East Asia, then why are there so many of you happily living here, why are so many of you intermarrying here with plain old Americans, why is it that so many Chinese would, if they only could, leave China to settle here in this “merciless” USA?

BTW you should understand that “Westerners” here in USA refers to people and places west of the Mississippi. We Americans have outlived Eurocentrism. We actually think that America is the center of the world. Don’t you?

The reason that South Koreans don’t like to see American GIs in Korea is that it reminds them of the whole stinking mess. It’s not that Koreans resent American racism against East Asians, because on a day-by-day basis, we all get along just fine. 90% of so-called American racism is propaganda by Leftists or by Globalists (but that’s become the same thing, hasn’t it?) What there is between Americans stationed in Korea and Koreans who live there … it’s mutual respect. Oh, I know, there’s a natural tendency for Koreans (and Japanese!) to look down on us as uneducated louts. Some of that is based on the truth (Koreans set exceptionally high standards for themselves in many respects) and some of it is envy, because USA is, after all, great. Don’t Chinese call America the “Great Kingdom”?

I don’t know if Koreans comprise THE most nationalistic people in East Asia. All of them — Japanese, Koreans, Chinese — are extremely nationalistic and even racist. Of course, the situation for Chinese is much more complex — there are so many of them! It’s a natural phenomenon. Everyone is racist and everyone is nationalistic. And that’s okay, except for Americans and for white people. We have been exposed to so much anti-American and anti-white propaganda that we have a hard time remembering who we are. But that’s changing.

I get the impression that you haven’t been in the USA for a good many years. I would like to suggest that you are overdue for a visit. OTOH, things have gotten so screwed up here since the PATRIOT Act that the government might not let you in …. or it could be dangerous for you. You probably would or will have no problems — hope not! — but I don’t really know.

Anyway, if you get a chance to tour the country and talk to people, you will most likely be amazed!

I’m an ordinary working class Chinese, not communist party member, let alone “representative”. While you may not take China’s “no war” warning seriously, the US leadership will. Because 60 years ago, China’s warning of “not to cross 38 line” being ignored result in an army of Chineses peasants drove the almighty Americans back to 38 line. Don’t konw about you, but the US generals aren’t likely to be stupid to make the same mistake again.

As for immigrants to the West, it means nothing. Most immigrants follow the money, they will go wherever they can make better money, West, Latin Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia, doesn’t really matter.

There’re over a million South Koreans living in China, plenty in Southeast Asia too. Easiest way to sting a Korean, mention American troops on their soil. The corrupt ruling elites and comprador class might want foreign troops, but not the average people.

Well, I have respect for old people, but not their regurgitation of propaganda.

Korea unification is in the interests of the US, Russia, China and Japan, and of international financial capitals in particular for their agenda, i.e. a centralized one world government, single currency.

So Trump’s vociferations are just intimidation meant to rally South and North Koreans.

“a centralized one world government” might be the long term goal, I don’t know. But in short term, if the US suffer another financial crisis the scale of 2008 or a worse one, the dollar system run the risk of collapsing. So money has to flow back to US market for the coming year or two. The best way to scare capital is the expection of war and political instability. This is why Trump will continue to stir up trouble in N.Korea, Taiwan, South China Sea, and Pakistan will be the coming hot spot for troubles.

When you put a money angle into international politics instead of “nobleness”, a lot of things become much easier to understand.

The Taliban is much more that just a nuisance, especially at the political level. These days, the American Empire rules by intimidation and fear, much as a Mafia capo does. The longer the Afghani sore festers, the weaker the Empire looks. And just as for a Mafia chieftain, even a perception of weakness can be fatal.

In Mandarin, the US is called ‘Mei3 Guo2’, translates as ‘Beautiful Nation’.

Not quite the same as ‘great’.

The East Asian take is varied, as expected, but everybody knows it’s a mess and wishes China would take a tighter rein on their Nork dog. Problem is, the dog has been conditioned for so long to behave this way that it can’t change its behaviour anymore, and might not even obey its master’s instructions. For all China knows, Nork’s nukes can just be easily directed at THEM.

As for immigrants to the West, it means nothing. Most immigrants follow the money, they will go wherever they can make better money, West, Latin Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia, doesn’t really matter.

That’ll only let the air out of the flag wavers.
My wife’s parents were immigrants from China – too SouthEast Asia – because of the money.

Anyone who thinks there will be a war with Nth Korea is a fool. Should a war erupt, will the US Army break ranks and flee again like they did in 1951. Yes some of us remember … the Glosters, Northhumberland Fusiliers, Royal Ulster Rifles, Kings Royal Irish Hussars and the 29th infantry brigade who didn’t flee and stood on the Imjin River. This time you can go it alone. After all your the one picking the fight…again!

This Hasbara peterAUS has turned into one of the biggest current pests of UNZ. Brainless comments in half-baked English and lots and lots of them. He swamps UNZ, and particularly comments to Saker’s articles with his waffle. I already skip the garbage, but it dilutes the worthwhile discussion, as he always finds some fool wanting to counter him.

Simply, the level of peterAUS is the level of Russiagate – for the imbeciles. To reduce clutter, do not engage him.

This is a good article but it starts from a wrong premise – that either US or NK want a war. This is not true even for US, simply because US does not have the economy to attack either Iran or North Korea. If it does attack even one of these two, the US will be finished in its current form.

The North Korean crisis is the Eastern equivalent of the Ukrainian crisis. The goal is to create eternally burning hot-spots on the borders of Russia and China, to book-end those two growing competitors with crisis that US can dial up or down. Among other, this makes US still the necessary supplier of weapons and protection to the economically advanced countries (good weapons budgets) near the points of the manufactured crisis – which is the old US racket from the time of the Soviet Union, just repackaged. But it also scares the international capital away from Russia and China, makes the New Silk Road more difficult to complete and many other benefits. In other words, US wants a crisis not a big war.

One has to completely switch out of MSM to even have a chance to begin to understand what is really going on.

If the war with NK ever starts, it will be due to a major error/miscalculation, which is always possible when US keeps playing with a loaded gun for too long, but this is the same risk as with the US build up in Eastern Europe.

Grandpa Charlie, I know that you are not a troll, you write what you believe in. But you are a wonderful prototype of a brainwashed American (US person really, there is more to America than US). You really, really have no idea what you are writing about and you are supposed to have a life-long experience behind you and even participation in the attack on Vietnam (or was it an attack on Korea), which is euphemistically called the “Vietnam War” in your country as if Vietnam attacked itself. Therefore, you are the best proof that the brain of an average US person is just not capable of coping with propaganda, you totally fall for it. You even translate your internal US conflict about the presently powerful racism against the Whites in US into some international issue, which shows how incapable you are of looking at the World through any other eyes then your US eyes. Naturally, you have a gag-reflex from your military brainwashing to call everyone who disagrees with you a communist.

Let me put it for you very simply – the problem for the World is not US Nationalism, the problem for the World is the aggressive US brainlessness. I compare US to a worn-out close-to-an-overdose-junky with a finger on a nuclear button to blow-up the whole World. US is the biggest present danger to World Peace, as most people of the World agree in surveys.

The Taliban offered to give bin Laden to the USA to forestall an at attack. The US attacked anyway.
Saddam gave up his weapons of mass destruction program. The US attacked anyway.
Gaddafi gave up his weapons of mass destruction program. The US attacked anyway.

Do not see why any state or any reasonable person should repose any trust in anything the US states or claims. When one in five of the Korean population died in the last US fire bombing campaign I cannot see the North Koreans doing anything other than ensuring they have the means to defend themselves against US violence.

No they are actually Pakistani (and not Iranian as the US yellow press likes to affirm)

Many more people die in gang violence in US than in combat in Afghanistan.

I don’t even know how anyone sane can come up with the idea of comparing these things. Gang violence doesn’t involve building machinery at taxpayer expense, shipping machinery to the other side of the world at taxpayer expense, staffing machinery at taxpayer expense, then shredding machinery at taxpayer expense. Then shipping back mangled bodies in need of lifelong treatment.

All this so that crooked “public works” projects can be implemented or lithium deposits can be exploited. I hear Blackwater is looking at providing protection…

Business, baby: Wealth transfer from the taxpayer to special interests.

It is also about having a lily pad near Iran I guess.

I would be extra happy if Afghanistan reformed into the 60s touristland that it used to be, but it won’t happen, especially not with toxic US/NATO.

I speculated about a North Korean War II here (though this was back in 2010).

A couple of further points/updates:

1. Actual strength of the North Korean Army is around 700,000 troops (the million figure is now suspected to be more of a fantasy). The 200,000 “special forces” I suspect are equivalent in quality to regular First World armies (though much more obsolete); the rest I don’t see as being credibly combat-worthy (that recent defector was swimming in parasites; it is generally acknowledged that the military spends much of its time doing construction work and helping with the harvest, instead of actually focusing on military matters).

2. That said, as I also wrote: “I suspect it will be a harder nut to crack than Iraq in 2003, or even 1991. It is an ultranationalist (not a Communist) regime with a formidable secret police, so you’re [probably] not going to be buying any generals off. North Koreans have higher IQs than Iraqis (so more competent), do not practice inbreeding (so more cohesive), and a have a lot more hills, mountains, and tunnels (which partially negate South Korean/American technological predominance).”

A South Korean victory over the North is pretty much inevitable, though it will probably involve deaths in the low 10,000s. Assuming, of course, that China doesn’t get involved – then everything changes.

while the Korean war had a neglible economic effect on the rest of the planet

After the Macarthur admin. decided to do nothing about the loot from the Great East Asian War, the next step in Japan’s economic miracle was the huge profits from having a supply and support role for the ‘UN’ (US+tokens) forces in Korea, especially a boost to the automotive industry, but also to the economy in general.

This was also setting the pattern in the Vietnam war, where both Sth. Korea and Japan found support and supply roles very profitable (yes, I know, ROK was also a combatant in Vietnam, very unpopular, according to some Vietnamese people I have met, but have also met Koreans who were just in support roles for the U.S.A.).

Sth. Korea was largely following Japan’s economic model, Japan is particularly a model for tech. without MIC.

I have met older people who claim to have been in combat in Korea or Vietnam, and there is no doubt that there was some intelligence role for Japan in the Korean war and after, it is only from President Roh that it was gone.

His predecessor (Kim Dae-Jung) is greatly loved, and I am thinking he was a good prez. but he was also subject to earlier manipulations by secret agencies, so not possible to say that he was entirely free of that, but also, of course, he was making big advances with DPRK.

This is the omission from the Saker’s analysis, our government has always blocking any Sth.-Nth. Korean rapprochement since early in this century.

Current P.M. Abe, rose to his seat in parliament, on the back of a prewar political family and comic books to claiming that Japan’s polity and military were doing nothing wrong in east Asia ever.

Now P.M. for the second time, he is banning over 100 DPRK-related companies, this on top of many other sanctions, previously enacted, plus more new ones. Most of the companies would be run (at least in Japan) by ‘special permanent residents’, descendants of people from the Korean peninsula and China, often (not always) here unwillingly.

Poimt is, while Fukushima number 1 is pumping out radiation, that fool’s prime concern is to push up the pressure on DPRK.

The coming abdication of the current emperor likely has something to do with politicians like Abe, they dislike him for saying, among several other things they didn’t like ‘Of course, my family has Korean ancestry.’, as anyone who is reading third- to seventh-century Japanese history (and there is none before that, maybe one mention in Wei dynasty chronicles, otherwise archaeology only). The 2,600 years is a lie. More like 1,600, impressive in itself.

Excuse the digressions, maybe the Emperor will abdicate for his own reasons, but politicians like Abe have long wanted to see him gone and replaced by his son.

Middle Eastern Islamists and the Taliban are using 1950’s era weapons and they held their own (the Taliban still is), so if it’s true that that’s what the N. Korean army possesses they can still resist and inflict casualties in the event of a protracted war. If war breaks out we’ll be treated to nightly images of of N. Korea being shock and awed although they have the capability to shock and awe U.S. troops on the 38th parallel and Seoul. It’s impossible for our air force to damage and degrade all of their many artillery emplacements.

Pat B’s The American Conservative addressed this around 2002-2003 and noted war games conducted by the Pentagon estimated that the U.S. could suffer up to 75K casualties in the first day of military operations alone. We haven’t conquered Afghanistan (and won’t) so I don’t know why our military brass thinks we can conquer N. Korea with its large army and mountainous terrain and install a pliant, pro-Western and philo-semitic Nork as leader.

There’s always a lot of unintended consequences in any war and I don’t see China sitting on the sidelines if war breaks out. A second Korean war just might be the war that finally ends the (((American))) empire.

It should be law that a president, Congress, UN ambassador, SOS and state dept. officials and fake news media members should be required to send an immediate family member to any potential or active war zone. They have no skin in the game and that must change.

{…to send an immediate family member to any potential or active war zone…..}

Lots of things repellent about British royalty, but one thing admirable is they participate in their country’s wars. I don’t remember exactly who it was, but one of the royal sons, maybe Prince Andrew, participated in the Falklands War. And I believe Prince Harry was in Afghanistan, although not sure in what capacity.

When the American electorate voted for Bill Clinton, the tradition of electing a POTUS who was a war vet was broken. Bill avoided the draft, although I am not sure it was rational for others to go and get killed in some foreign country 1,000s of miles away from US homeland, that had not attacked US.

And today, despite the rah-rah of “I support our troops”, after the end of draft, American public could not care less about the casualties to the volunteer (mercenary) US military. “They volunteered to go and fight somewhere, didn’t they?”.

Power grid! That’s an understatement. I have thought of the point, too, for more than two years, although careful to wait until the DPRK announced this summer before saying anything on-line. Didn’t want to be seen as giving them ideas!

PeteAUSwitz is a rare treasure of military wisdom and a premier jooie keyboard commando here at Unz……and much revered by the assorted commenting cognescenti. Isn’t he the talmudic lad who suggested the Koreans wouldn’t fight because they all have been debilitated by intestinal worms causing itchy anus syndrome? To quote General George Patton: “An army itching their butts is not an army ready to fight”.

There is a simple solution to the North Korea problem. NK has to import rocket motors, if nothing else, either from or via Russia. All that has to be done to bring NK’s nuclear programme to a dead stop is for Putin to stop the illicit traffic in rocket motors. No rocket motors, no rocket man!

Here the problem is quite different. This entire matter will obviously end with the US and the world recognizing the North Korea’s status of nuclear power, and how this will affect to nuclear proliferation remains at anyone’s guess. On the part of the US, it is only a matter of who and when will drink this cup of poison, not the DPRK nuclear status, but the proliferation.
There will be a lot of states which will arm themselves with nuclear weapons, it is within reach of at least a couple dozens.
It will be another glorious achievement of the neocon imperialism.

Lawyer’s point: Ukraine did not cease to exist, whether de jure or de facto, at the time of the coup, which is what I assume this blogger is referring to. That’s not the way international law works. Look at Latin America! Amusingly, since the bolsheviks came to power in a coup in 1917, the logic of this blogger’s argument is that the Soviet Union never existed, de jure, in international law!

Japan has the world’s largest plutonium stockpile, outside the U.S.A., RF, possibly China, and unlikely (for Japan’s to be larger), Israel.

Also, advanced space programme.

Anyone to imagining that there is no secret contingency plan must be imaginative.

As long as we are under the U.S.A. umbrella of death, such plans are not needed.

One major diplomatic failure when Kim Jong-Il was still in charge, the larger-scale rocketry was honestly aimed at putting small satellites in orbit. Under international law, they have every right to do it (admittedly, they were lax about aviation and shipping warnings, but not alone there).

So much whining about that, so little fatty is deciding to concentrate only on ICBMs and nyukyular (thx. G.W. Bush) bombs. It would be amusing if little fatty and his advisors decided to change the emphasis back to satellite launches, but, even if they did, the whining won’t stop.

Supporting forces in NK would also be a nightmare. If we deploy the Navy, we would likely lose all the carriers to missiles and torpedos, so that’s a no go. There will be no conventional war in Korea, for all of the above reasons, and also the ridiculously bad fitness levels of US forces.
Thank God…

It is fun,
Silly speculations.
And I do admit I like it.
But it not a reality.
Tillersons military option is not on the table. It is in the waste basket. And I suspect that every serious person knows it.
If the war in Korean peninsula breaks out, the ww3 will follow. and nobody will be able to stop it.

In the case of North Korea, past performances – as the investment gurus are so fond of saying- are most likely predictive of future results.

The US is good at blowing up small defenseless nations and plunging entire regions into chaos. It exceeds all martial expectations when dealing with formidable opponents like mighty Grenada and fearsome Panama. However, it has not fought an opponent at rough conventional parity since engaging the Chinese in Korea and that turned into a bloody stalemate that is currently a standoff. No peace treaty has been signed.

The United States – since the Spanish American War- have always played with a militarily stacked deck. There is no way that the US can emerge triumphant in a conventional war against the North Koreans. The best analogy – to my mind- is the Italian Campaign in the Second World War- a bloody and indecisive sideshow which ended in an effective stalemate. The terrain, the opposing forces and the local population all represent a bridge too far.

The North Korean crisis is the Eastern equivalent of the Ukrainian crisis. The goal is to create eternally burning hot-spots on the borders of Russia and China, to book-end those two growing competitors with crisis that US can dial up or down.

Yes, this appears to be what passes for U.S. strategy. The problem is that it is failing.

The Ukraine is becoming an economic basketcase, its 40 million people likely to be refugees pouring all over Europe. I think the German people can see this disaster coming; that is likely one reason Merkel is in so much trouble these days.

In the current spat, I doubt that Trump considered South Korea’s point of view when he threatened “fire and fury” on the North. Millions of the people in the South would die in any war — and that’s if the U.S. won it. What would happen if the U.S. should lose — distinctly possible if China joins the fray — will likely be unbearable. And that is probably why South Korea is rapidly warming up to China. The longer the crisis lasts, the more thoroughly the U.S. will lose the South Koreans. I’m pretty sure that that was not Trump’s intention.

So while you may be right that perpetual crisis may be Trump’s goal, he should be thinking hard, for longer than a few seconds, on the cost of failure.

If as in scenario I posted above (ground attack up and only to, the most, 70 Kms) the casualties should be much lighter. Something along lines of a couple of hundreds dead and a couple of thousands wounded. Mostly South Koreans.
Casualties on North Korean side would be horrific.

Now, should advance continue above that line into hostile territory, I concede, the level of casualties would rise. I just don’t see any need for that. With any (conventional) threat to South Korea eliminated the destruction of North Korea could simply continue from air/sea until they lose their will and break.

My impression of (non-nuclear) North Korean military is poor, really poor.

If you take a look at available videos, and they are state propaganda, and carefully go through them, you’ll see that all shown there is just….poor. From weapons and equipment, through tactics, thinking…. etc.
The main “quality” is that moral. I, personally, believe it’s extremely brittle. Break of communication with overwhelming enemy firepower will, if it comes to that, simply shatter their self-delusion.

As for those “special forces” there is nothing special about them except, perhaps, that circus level of physical ability/self-punishment. That would’ve worked in medieval times, not today.

As for those tunnels they would make things a bit difficult but clearing/sealing them won’t be a big problem with US technology.

All people around the world are stupid. They do not realize that only one thing works in the world.
And that is the king Arthur’s round table principle. Soviet Russia did not hear about this principle, and they paid for it. European Union did hear about it but put it aside. And they start to pay for it now. Globalist did heard about it but they thought that it was just a fairy tale. And the result is that they are at the end of the rope dangling in the wind.

You could ask yourself the same questions about the US and The Donald´s supporters….all those wearing the red caps with the moto “MAGA”….but not only, also the amercianized “super-brains” like The Saker and Israel Shamir trying all day by all means to whitewash The Donald….the later even in the issue of abuse against women and Jerusalem issue….

When reading these men and the level of servitude to the Empire they have arrived to, I also agree in that:

That video reminds me of American WWII propaganda films. In particular I remember one Movietone newsreel that had American soldiers cheering Eisenhower in Germany. As a young boy that impressed me, but then my father pointed out that soldiers cheer whenever they are ordered to. He had many interesting things to say about Eisenhower until he was put in the trunk of a car and driven to Canada where he was tortured for six weeks by Dr. Cameron as part of the MK_ULTRA program. After this treatment he had amnesia, and he tended to answer questions by shouting “Go jump in the lake!”

I don’t actually disagree, the low 10,000’s deaths guesstimate includes civilian casualties, which will constitute the main bulk of all South Korean/US deaths (assuming the Norks fire their artillery into Seoul as everyone is anticipating).

I expect military casualties in your scenario to be in the 1,000’s, and North Korean ones (as you say) extraordinarily higher.

Agreed on obsolescence, lack of training, etc., etc., but I still expect them to be a more capable adversary than Iraq 1991, and with a geographic advantage. And their special forces (not the much touted 200,000, but more specialized units) do actually have an impressive performance record, and seem to be rather dedicated up to and including taking poison in the case of mission failure.

At this stage, it is unlikely that North Korea will be able to successfully fire off any nuclear missiles at Japan (let alone the United States). However, I speculate that lower tech solutions may be used. For instance, nuclear mines (an idea touted by NATO in the 1950s to counter Soviet numerical superiority). Not much the advancing forces will be able to do about that – and will increase military deaths from 1,000’s to 10,000’s.

>No they are actually Pakistani (and not Iranian as the US yellow press likes to affirm)

Agreed. Pakistani army senior officers have deep ethnic ties to the Taliban, the junior officers often share their fundamentalist, Saudi-inspired Sunni Islamic beliefs. Anybody who thinks the Taliban is an Iranian creature rather than a Pakistani one needs to look up the “Kunduz Airlift”.

>I would be extra happy if Afghanistan reformed into the 60s touristland that it used to be, but it won’t happen, especially not with toxic US/NATO.

The best thing we could do, ironically, is let it go into the Iranian sphere of influence. It makes sense. Let’s us get out and stop wasting billions of dollars for no apparent strategic objective. It’ll be a solution that the Russians and Indians will accept, unlike Pakistan controlling the place-avoiding the neo-Mughal dagger pointing at Delhi that haunts Modi at night. The Iranians desperately want it to make sure Pakistan doesn’t have it, and it’ll keep the Iranians busy, like every other foreign power who has strayed into Afghanistan since Alexander The Great, meaning they have less time to work to their west for a few years. Best of all, we get the mild satisfaction of screwing the ISI.

I do not know what Trump’s game with NK is, the whole thing really seems quite stupid at best. But if the neocons are at all involved, there MUST be an Israeli angle (and NK has historically been very hostile towards Israel).

”When you put a money angle into international politics instead of “nobleness”, a lot of things become much easier to understand.”

I agree. I think China and the US are definitely not ”enemies”, they are just acting as if they were, that’s a deception. A few years ago (when NATO botched the attack in the Caucusus, ie with Georgia’s Sakashvilli) and GS transferred the cash abroad, a rumor circulated stating that a new central banking system would be created in Ohio to replace the Fed, based on the deliberate crash of the US dollar followed by the re-engineering of a ”new” US dollar incorporating, among others, the Yuan.

The main difficulty is “nuclear option”. All my posts here have a basic premise that nuclear weapons won’t be used.
And you are correct; just one nuclear land mine within DMZ will be a game changer. From there anything is possible.

Anything.

No way we here, or anywhere in public, can talk about truly important issues.

It all boils down to proper intelligence about NK leadership, CiC of nuclear capability and physical locations of nuclear weapon systems.

The most important, still, is, I believe, a correct estimate of decision making process of NK top leadership. And that’s something I have no idea about.

I still believe, should push come to shove, the effort will be a joint operation by US and China.
Hopefully. Related to “Anything”.

The perpetual crisis is not Tump’s goal, he is just a reality show star. As to what will happen to Ukraine, the people running the show never let a good crisis go to waste, the worse it is the better it is.

I was back to the US for almost two months last summer. Traveled to New York, New Mexico, Colorado and Louisiana, based out of Oklahoma, where I grew up.

People are great everywhere I travel in the world. Some are more clued in as to how the world really works, than others. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans have no idea, including my loved ones. The United States is geographically spectacular, as you would expect a continent sized country.

All peoples are racist, it’s in our evolved DNA for group survival. I wrote about this at some length in the first two books of The China Trilogy.

The difference is that except for Genghis Khan, who adopted Christianity by the way, the only race of people who fanned out like locust, exterminating everyone in their path and stealing everything they could get their hands on, was Caucasians, and they are still doing it as I write.

The Chinese were far advanced in maritime and weapons technology and centuries ahead of the West, traveling around the world before Columbus was even born. They could have easily conquered the world, but they didn’t. Instead, they traded goods, technology and diplomacy – not global genocide and exploitation.

If I recall correctly Prince Andrew did serve in the Falklands campaign and saw action. I also remember prince Harry serving in Afghanistan but think he just camped out at a base and didn’t do much else.

And you’re right about the people that claim to care so much about the troops. When you tell them the best way to show support is to bring the troops home from an unjust war they angrily reply, “that’s what they signed up for”.

This was confirmed in February the following year, when the British Ministry of Defence revealed that Harry had been secretly deployed as a Forward Air Controller to Helmand Province in Afghanistan for the previous ten weeks.[31][32] The revelation came after the media – notably, German newspaper Bild and Australian magazine New Idea[33][34] – breached the blackout placed over the information by the Canadian and British authorities.[35] It was later reported that, while in Afghanistan, Harry helped Gurkha troops repel an attack from Taliban insurgents,[36] and performed patrol duty in hostile areas.[37][38][39][40] His tour made Harry the first member of the Royal Family to serve in a war zone since his uncle, Prince Andrew, flew helicopters during the Falklands War.

Second time:

On 7 September 2012, Harry arrived at Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan as part of the 100-strong 662 Squadron, 3 Regiment, Army Air Corps,[52] to begin a four-month combat tour as a co-pilot and gunner for an Apache helicopter.[53] On 10 September, within days of arriving in Afghanistan, it was reported that the Taliban threatened his life. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid spoke to Reuters and was quoted as saying: “We are using all our strength to get rid of him, either by killing or kidnapping,” and “We have informed our commanders in Helmand to do whatever they can to eliminate him.”[54][55]
It was announced on 21 January 2013 that Harry was returning from a 20-week deployment in Afghanistan,[56] where he served as an Apache co-pilot/gunner.

And, while we are on the topic of top political leadership/military how about Israeli Prime Ministers, for example.
The not so popular person on this site, for example:

He trained as a combat soldier and served for five years in an elite special forces unit of the IDF, Sayeret Matkal. He took part in numerous cross-border assault raids during the 1967–70 War of Attrition, rising to become a team-leader in the unit. He was wounded in combat on multiple occasions.[4] He was involved in many other missions, including Operation Inferno (1968), and the rescue of the hijacked Sabena Flight 571 in May 1972 in which he was shot in the shoulder.[17]

I still believe, should push come to shove, the effort will be a joint operation by US and China.

China has no more of an interest in seeing Seoul destroyed than the US does – there are too many intergrown economic interests between China and ROK. IMO China’s direct involvement would be inevitable, at the very least because destruction of the North would cause a huge crisis on China’s border regardless of who is seen as “starting” the war or who moves troops against whom. China’s move could be presented as a brokered solution to a static war in which neither of the two sides has a clear endplan. But in reality it would mean China forcing a bargain for more direct influence in the DPRK, which would give them something real to offer the ROK in exchange for a more neutral stance between the US and China. And, as The Saker points out, the political fallout of KWII could drive a real wedge between the US and the ROK.

I just think that the main problem here is how to have either a different regime with nukes ,or the current regime without nukes.
Or, no regime with nukes threatening to use them against US soil.

That is, I believe, US main interest here. National interest. How does ROK feel about it I don’t see as important.

So, what could be a scenario there, with, say, China as a main player?
And keeping in mind that as soon as a first nuclear explosion happens anywhere there anything is possible.

I believe that the best option would be a (bloody) coup there.
China and US simply “terminate with extreme prejudice” the top leadership, The Fat Man in particular. That’s easy.
How to, after that, NOT have a nuclear weapon detonated by somebody there is another matter altogether. That’s a challenge.
Put a China friendly/satellite/vassal regime there. That should be easy.

I mean, the easiest is really that The Fat Man simply tones down his shit and keeps a low profile.
Of course, totalitarian regimes with such person on top tend to create that mindset.
One does get an impression that he is revered by all the top brass there. If…if that’s the case (likely or they are really masters of doublespeak/Oscar winners) then there is a big problem.
How would people in the chain of command of detonating at least one nuke behave/react if The Fat Man is suddenly killed by USA? THAT it the thing.

You know, there comes a moment in time when a top decision maker acts on intuition….hunch…whatever.
A good example would be Eisenhower when deciding to go with the landing in Normandy.
Or countless of great leaders/decisions through history.

The ultimate decision here, will, be made by the US President.
Hopefully he’ll have all proper intelligence. All options competently and carefully presented.
Hopefully he’ll think that over a bit more than that launch on Syria.
Or not.
“50/50”?

A country without a legitimate government is what? To be sure, the people and land are still there, but if there is no legitimate government to present its bona fides to the UN, its legal status is in limbo. That is what I meant by “de facto”, and I agree I should not have used “existence” as a legal category.
Perhaps better than S. America, we can look at Somalia as a case in point.

In its judgement on Somalia, the UK High Court ruled that government is legitimized in 3 ways:
(1) whether it achieved power through constitutional processes,
(2) the extent and stability of administrative control over state territory, as well the nature of said control (whether by force or consent).
(3) and the nature of its dealings with other governments, including both foreign and internal governmental bodies.
Arguably, the post-Maidan government in Kiev at the time of Crimea’s separation met none of the above criteria. There are other arguments that lend weight to the legitimacy of the Crimean move towards independence, but this is a thread about Korea…

Looks like Harry did much more than I thought. I’m not a prince Harry groupie and don’t follow his life but remembered that most news agencies were mum about his activities while he was deployed.

Some previous Israeli prime ministers served the Israeli armed forces with distinction. But they no longer have to make the hard decision to commit Israeli forces to large scale conflicts (resulting in heavy casualties) since the U.S. now does all of their hard fighting for them and overthrows any Muslim Middle East leader or regime that Izzy doesn’t like.

If I remember right China and N.K. have an agreement (signed back in the early 50’s) that if N.K. is attacked/ invaded China will enter the war as they did before ,and if you think for a minute that they won’t your insane, for China would simply loose to much face and would be seen as no better than the west.!!

China and US simply “terminate with extreme prejudice” the top leadership, The Fat Man in particular. That’s easy.
How to, after that, NOT have a nuclear weapon detonated by somebody there is another matter altogether. That’s a challenge.

That’s an understatement. IMO there would be extreme risk of provoking a nuclear or conventional attack with such a scenario. There might be a prospect of a soft coup brokered by China, with face-saving measures for the Kim cabal (really the key to so much east Asian diplomacy). And it would be more likely to happen that way if hostilities broke out beforehand.

You seem to have construed by statement as the diametric opposite of what it really was. China has said two things. They have said they would honor their agreement with DPRK if the US attacked DPRK. They have said that they would stay clear of any conflict started by the DPRK. The scenario I was describing entailed China intervening regardless of prior stated intentions as a way of containing a crisis, which would be a vital interest of theirs.

Actually, I suspect that things may go totally asymmetrical if N. Korea is attacked.
A nuclear EMP attack would be a prohibitively dangerous gambit on their part. It better work to devastating effect, or N. Korea just signed their death warrant. They probably will have signed it in any case.

– EMP effects may or may not be as expected or hoped for. Effects are totally dependent on countless unpredictable factors. They may be quite uneven, and even of minor import. Nobody can predict, never mind know the results. There’s no strategic advantage to knocking out people’s clock radios and MP3 players, and much critical infrastructure could be expected to survive.
– Whether the blast fails to detonate, or fails to detonate fully is a matter of probability. I doubt N. Korea can be 101% certain of a totally successful EMP blast at the optimum altitude. That’s if they had a miniaturized nuke at all, which I also doubt.
– The one effect they can be pretty certain of is that an ICBM headed for the US mainland would get an immediate devastating response whatever happened after it arrived.

Why would one take those risks when 35 or so guys with shoulder-fired weapons, or even .500+ calibre rifles can, quite quickly and anonymously, permanently take down the USA’s antiquated, creaking grid in “drive-by shootings” at critical node step-down transformers? Even 15-20 could do it if it was carefully planned around timing and system load. RPGs are cheap ‘n cheerful, and readily hidden in the trunk of a car. Transformer stations usually have little more than a chain-link fence for protection. The system would go down, and quite probably not rise again for a generation.

Some of the Canadian grid would go down with it, though it could probably recover in a matter of days, if not hours and keep some of the NE US running at lower usage. With its grid down, the international Empire folds within a week, leaving its garrison troops, diplomats, and overseas citizens stranded while domestically it dissolves into roaming, territorial warbands. The USA’s 100 nuclear plants will go into meltdown as the sustaining diesel generators run out of fuel, so there’s no need for a massive strike to make much of CONUS uninhabitable.

The perpetual crisis is not Tump’s goal, he is just a reality show star.

Whoever came up with the perpetual crisis idea, and managed to impose this as U.S. policy, has too much arrogance and insufficient intelligence — as the policy is already clearly failing.

As to what will happen to Ukraine, the people running the show never let a good crisis go to waste, the worse it is the better it is.

Remember that the U.S. is already in the glue in the Ukraine because someone didn’t want to “let a good crisis go to waste”.

Similarly, by unnecessarily provoking the North Korean crisis, the U.S. is going to lose South Korea — and probably all of East Asia as well, as the people there realize how little Uncle Sam respects them.

The U.S. is seriously in danger of losing Europe and East Asia. So I say to whoever was responsible for the perpetual crisis policy, congratulations for a world-class blunder.

I lived many years in Western Japan. It was only 100 miles or so to SKorea Busan-city. Any attack on NKorea is effectively an attack on both China and SKorea – and Japan. I suspect that 98~99% of US citizens have absolutely no idea where those four countries lie in the world let alone how close they are to each other. Ignorance – carefully nurtured in the US with its glaring educational inequalities and its class structures – is what leads already – around the world with its scores of military bases encircling the globe and denying the sovereignty of all those other lands – to wars and death and destruction – thanks to the US WMD industry! And not knowing much about the outside worldwide. Shame US! Shame!

The 200,000 “special forces” I suspect are equivalent in quality to regular First World armies (though much more obsolete);

Still a formidable adversary with size similar to a mid-level European power (I.e. Spain, Italy). Even discarding the rest of the army, with this “effective army” and the terrain, any offensive toward NK would be VERY hard. I suspect also that a massive bombing campaign will be able to degrade NK artillery hardware but not negate it. So, after a couple of weeks civilian loses in Seoul will be in the ten thousands scale.
Saker, as usual, exaggerates capabilities of his darlings but there are some hard truths on his article.

This is 2017. Concentrated attacks on infrastructure, power grid, command and control with little or no casualties on the attacking side will make them sue for peace. While most of the people in NK wouldn’t feel any difference the ruling class would be hit hard. Many of them would be dead.

The US also signed the Budapest document then organized a coup to overthrow the legitimate government of Ukraine.

1. Tired myth. Popular revolt by the western half of the country against an unpopular leader is not a “coup.” Organizers of the overthrow were Ukrainian political parties and organizations, with Ukrainian oligarchs going along. The West played a supporting role in this – much less then say French support for the Americans during the American Revolution (was that in your opinion a French coup to overthrow the legitimate government in the British colonies?)

2. Budapest Memorandum explicitly prohibited territorial changes, nuclear attack, and use of force against Ukraine. It did not discuss supporting this or the other political forces within the country. So Putin providing help or advisers to Yanukovich in 2003-2004, the West to Yushchenko and later to Maidan, were not violations. He, say, American special forces overthrown Ukraine’s president it would have been a different story.

Since the US breached this agreement there was no longer an agreement for Russia to violate.

Setting aside the fact that the US actions did not constitute a breach, in your world if one country violated an agreement with another, then all countries are now allowed to do so?

So since the Americans violated Yugoslavia’s sovereignty by taking Kosovo, you would have been fine with, say the Hungarians taking a chunk of Serbia? Because sovereignty had already been violated by someone else?

The just released study of documents concerning the promises to the Russians about NATO not expanding eastwards given by the US

Unwritten statements (thus, no actual binding agreements) that were not even made to Russia but to representatives of the defunct USSR, which no longer existed with NATO expanded eastward.

Oh you mean like in Iraq and Afghanistan where wedding parties become terrorist and our missiles fall oh some where 100 miles due north from its target, while our ground pounders become what they were in the last go a-round, and that of course is canon fodder served up by the arm chair generals…

EMP, yup, do anyone of you really know what that is, an electromagnetic pulse, well, i think its an exaggeration based upon wrong assumptions, and this kind of EMPs is even you able to make.
Its called by another name, friction.

I have held, an Rayteon Missile Guiding Card in my own hands, and even you could fry it, by your own EMP, made by your own cloths an body, like if you pat your cat/dog and you get some statics, like an tiny electro shock, that alone is sufficient to fry the ICE-card in it, or at least, alter the wiring in the ICE, witch is microscopic, and so on, to PC-HDDs, and how do deal with it, since avoiding it is de facto impossible, because Human body’s is generating EMPs all the time, is to Earthen it, like an lighting rod, thats it, you simply divert the pulse to the ground.

I dont know what kind of EMPs you talk about, but I know the Russians is on the right ehh….. path, but that is not per. def. an EMP, its more like an concentrated high frequency radiation, witch works differently, by that I mean it alters the very structure in the metal you use, in any present day viring.
And when its manipulated that way, you alter the electronics witch is defines with very little variation and any altering, if you know electronics, it alters the entire system/card.
To me, an PC is just an bucket of transistor’s, capice, nothing else, shit in, shit out, period.

Get it, EMP is for me, an weird scare story, thats it.
I haven’t seen or read that it in fact works, so far, it may work on an house, since Earthing isn’t common, and your owen may survive, I dont think your LapTop will, inlc TV, but as long its grounded, it have will an chance, like lighting bolts, witch are staggering powerful.
I have standed in an area just before the lighting strikes, and I can assure you that the low frequency, the hum, is hehe, amazing, cool, and I ran for my life, it was just like an bomb going off behind me.

Second, again, nuks, well, forget it, its simply not going to work at all, and as some said it, take an long hard look on the map, if you are able to find, NK at all, huh, like Africa, tat tiny peninsula attached to Egypt, you know, west of Madagascar.

Have you ever been in the US? Have you ever visited any US store, from Walmart and Home Depot to Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue? It is very hard to find anything that is not made in China, and when you find it, it is made in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and such like. Corporations in their blind greed destroyed 80% of the US production, so any sharp move from the US against China would be a disaster for the US.

And again you miss the point but your kind always do as long as its someone elses’s blood and guts being spilled,but then again there will be no war in N.K. and there will be no war in Iran for the simply reason our military has already reached its limits…

I just don’t see US administration allowing the current regime in North Korea to have nuclear tipped ICBMs.

Let’s say that NK will be able to have that warhead in a year. This is a big unknown; a year, two years, 4 years.
Let’s say that The Fat Boy will, still, be the supreme leader there.
That combination is simply too much of a threat to US.

There are several ways not to get there. No need to regurgitate them.

Now, should we do get, say, to a month from that moment, what we could expect?

I have a pretty good idea but won’t post it here. Posting/explaining details would simply feel inapropriate for this place.
That option has, say, around 90 % probability. A good option for most and a very bad option for a very few.
Another 10 % goes to another option. A very bad option for everyone.

I did eat the best Kentucky fried chicken in Plats-burg.
I have been in US quite a lot of times on business trip. Two companies I worked for had headquarters in US. Some privet trips also. That was more than 30 years ago. I did not do too much shopping except some booze for my husband. We here in Canada have also huge shopping centers, with large parking lots. 30 years ago I could hardly find a parking place. Nowadays it is no problem.
Parking lots are practically empty. But anyway I do not do too much shopping anymore.
Half a trillion of trade deficit a year of US with China I do consider it definitely a big problem.

Well, I live in the US since 1991. Things have changed dramatically during this period. Back then made in China stuff was largely in K-mart and Walmart, where its poor quality was matched by low prices. More decent departments stores used to have a lot of things made in the US, Canada, Japan, and even Europe. Now finding anything that is not made in China is a huge task, and things made there are priced as if they are made in the US. The manufacturers know the score, though: if something is made in China, the label saying so is hidden somewhere deep, whereas if something is made in the US, it says: “proudly made in the US” right on the box. Without China we won’t have light bulbs, clothes, furniture, plates, forks, spoons, knives, alarm clocks, chainsaws, tools, and many other things. If someone has leverage now, it’s China over the US, whereas if the US takes a stand, the country will collapse. That’s what blind corporate greed leads to.

‘Your kind’ your ass, I was against 99% of all these Zionist/ZOG wars we’ve been in since 911. North Korea is a different animal with actual nuclear bombs with a meat head despot and a weird power culture/worship deal which has to be dealt with militarily if it does not relinquish them peacefully.

Sounds to me it was your brother and you that were the bullies. If he was such an aggressive sort, why didn’t he just give him a quick groin kick. Seems he came to you with a valid (and non-aggressive) request. Being a bully yourself you decided to show him you were not interested in a non-violent conclusion.

“…the last and only option left to the US is what they always eventually resort to would be to directly and deliberately engage in the mass murder of civilians to “break the enemy’s will to fight” and destroy the “regime support infrastructure” of the enemy’s forces (another time-honored US military tradition stretching back to the Indian wars and which was used during the Korean war and, more recently, in Yugoslavia).”

It goes back to at least the War to Repel Yankee Aggression. The Shenandoah campaign against a mostly neutral population, the deliberate besieging, bombardment, burning, and attacking cities full of women and children, and the precious blacks we are told they were “liberating”.

Hell kid your too young to remember the Korean War or Nam, the blood letting as our troops fought their way back to the 38th in summer uniforms at 40 below, because someone forgot to tell those dumb ass’s in foggy bottom that Korea has a winter.Two good books that you ought to read “The Coldest Winter” and “About Face” those at least will give you some idea about what a war there would really entail.
And yet another point if you were Kim would you give up your nukes and wind up like Libya did, from a once prosperous nation to being little more than the stone age,lol I would’nt and only a fool would, as I said there will be no war in Korea for many reasons.!!!!

Merely pointing out that you are guilty of the same things of which you accuse others. I couldn’t say whether I agree with it or not. The things you write that aren’t incoherent seem to be mostly politically motivated fantasies. The only thing of yours I’ve read that makes any sense at all are your personal on certain other posters.

I’m old enough to remember Viet Nam.
Comparing Korea with Libya doesn’t work. Libya was prosperous and stable Korea is socilalay and economicly arrested by a cult dictatorship for the last 70 years. They are in a desperate way and will use nukes ‘to achieve their goals’, whatever they are, by their twisted logic.

Well if it is incoherent to you and it is coherent to others this probably means that the selection standard of the Hasbara trolls have declined too much. Maybe you need more education.

Everybody here makes spelling mistakes and the communication still goes on, it is only the Hasbara crapsters who latch onto them instead of the substance of the comment. Oh wait, but you do not understand the substance of my comments, this is why you have to latch onto spelling mistakes.

At least I never use multiple handles such as: peterAUS, britishbrainsize1325cc, anonymous and so on and so on. I also have to make a living and cannot spend the amount of time here that you do, as a professional troll.

While the suffering and damage would be immense, the US has a potential of a (massive) misplay here. In 1950 the relevance of the war in Korea for the global economy was relatively small, today it is massive. If the US causes the collapse of the Japanese and Korean economies by attacking, or clearly provoking an attack, with a very high probability they end up losing the puppets in South East Asia and by extension the economic basis of their unilateral Empire, further triggering the long awaited domestic collapse.

Russia and China will continue to verbally protest, but I doubt they would really at any point go “all in” to prevent this kind of misplay. Instead they could, and probably will crush the US politically in the global community after the damage, and while it is being done. Don’t even mention what nukes would mean. NK isn’t like Ukraine in the sense that its people harbor hostility towards China or Russia and as such is not an adjustable hot spot that could be used by the neocons on their borders. It would only cause a “benevolent” refugee crisis”, unlike what we are seeing in the EU, or even Ukraine today (doubt the majority of Ukraine citizens really “hate” Russians”, mostly the Polish and Lithuanian nazis posing as them).

Two and too are different words by the way. It’s not really a “spelling” error. And when have you ever addressed the substance of the people you like to attack? Apparently you’re the only one to be afforded that curtesy.

I thought this was your job judging by what you post here which seems to be a mixture of personal attacks, pointing out grammatical errors, and labeling anyone who doesn’t agree with you a troll.

At this stage, it is unlikely that North Korea will be able to successfully fire off any nuclear missiles at Japan (let alone the United States). However, I speculate that lower tech solutions may be used. For instance, nuclear mines (an idea touted by NATO in the 1950s to counter Soviet numerical superiority). Not much the advancing forces will be able to do about that – and will increase military deaths from 1,000′s to 10,000′s.

just in case I also scanned your article. nukes weren’t found.

1994, NK and SK were very close in military strength. but the gap is huge in 2017 in SK favor. 2017, NK got nukes. Now what? what is the point in an estimate that do not include the nukes? the greatest equalizer? from what I have read, NK also got scuds loaded with chemicals to target population centers. as another but weak form of MAD.

They are full of idiocies, the worst being the KSA, but there are many others, as even other people noticed.

You simply do NOT know anything re military matters but u write about it as if you did… the result is pathetic.

I remember once you were criticizing the Saker for his mentioning morale as an important( obviously far from the only) factor in combat power & you kinda just dismissed it… right there I knew you never served in any military ever…

Since the Korea war how many countries has North Korea attacked? Right, Zero.

How many have your fucking country attacked? Not to mention sanctions, overthrows, proxy wars, all manners of International Law violations? Hard to count, been so many…

Demonization of the N.Korean regime as a bunch of crazy people who’ll launch nukes on the ZUSA or anywhere else without serious provocation is just the same old BS propaganda we have seen time & again against countries the zamericans want to attack.

The economic and human costs of such a war would be devastating.

North Korea: The Costs of War, Calculated
Even a limited war with North Korea would kill millions, devastate the environment, and bankrupt the U.S. Preventing it should be the peace movement’s highest priority
by John Feffer Posted on December 18, 2017

Was across the Injin river from the area that arty can reach Seoul in 1953.
The temperature is -10 in the winter. It’s too cold for grunts. Could they
please make it a missile war.
NK has a right to have nukes and missiles.
We would have an anti-missile system if the suicidle Dems hadn’t fought
it for 65 years.
The Koreans hate the Japs subjugating them in the 30s & 40s.
I think Japan would be one of their first targets.

In this case L.K. it’s conceivable. A massive attack by the US and S Korea could actually reduce civilian casualties. Massive aerial attacks on the artillery pieces near Seoul coupled with missile attacks on command and control, power grid and a few other strategic targets will make the NORKS sue for peace pronto. Of course a peace/reunification deal with China, Russia and the Koreas would be the best scenario but time is of the essence and the Chinks are dragging their feet.

You know nothing of N.K. and its people nor the fact that we used germ warfare against them back in 52-53, dispite all the agreements we had signed outlawing there use, but blather on using the ole neo-con line that what we don’t understand must be destroyed..

Massive aerial attacks on the artillery pieces near Seoul coupled with missile attacks on command and control, power grid and a few other strategic targets will make the NORKS sue for peace pronto.

Well….possible, but…..I don’t think it would be that simple.
Two problems.
The very start of that operation must take out The Fat Man and his sycophants. Requires exact intelligence. Not easy.
The suppression of heavy artillery/MLRs/tactical conventional missiles isn’t that easy. A lot of difficult terrain and a lot of weaponry there. A ground operation is a must, IMHO, at least up to MLRs range.

And, the most important, how would CiC of nuclear weapons work? THAT is the big unknown.
I suspect that without The Fat Man nobody can launch anything. Such regimes operate that way.
But…..what happens when the CiC is broken for any reason imaginable?
I believe that is the most important question here. Not quite sure can it be answered at all, actually.

Still, I do believe that the issue will be resolved. Still enough time and neither of the Big Three particularly likes that type of regime.

The very start of that operation must take out The Fat Man and his sycophants. Requires exact intelligence. Not easy.

‘Yung Fat Kim’ doesn’t have to be taken out, just scared shitless. LOL.

The suppression of heavy artillery/MLRs/tactical conventional missiles isn’t that easy. A lot of difficult terrain and a lot of weaponry there. A ground operation is a must, IMHO, at least up to MLRs range.

Won’t be that easy but these aren’t the latest in ‘artillery technology’ that the NORKS have. If our intelligence of the area, and that will involve South Korean intelligence, is accurate, then bombing, including saturation bombing by some B 52’s, with some limited attacks by land forces should do the trick. Hey war is ugly but sometimes justified. Of course I would prefer the ‘grand bargain’ w/China, Russia and Korea but the Chinese are dragging their feet.

I do not consider it likely that North Korea will have the means to successfully deliver nukes to population concentrations in S. Korea, Japan, or the US. It has had impressive successes in both nuclear weaponry and long-range rocketry in the past year, but there is still no concrete evidence of the successful coupling of the two technologies; furthermore, the construction of a survivable deterrent capacity is a separate project that will take many more years by itself.

Hence the observation that nuclear nukes are likely to be the most realistic deterrent option at North Korea’s current level of technological sophistication.

Yes, NK has Scuds with chemicals, I imagine that they along with the artillery will kill a few 10,000’s civilians in Seoul.

Far from emotional on any subject for that’s a waste of time,I just missed the Korean war but have a number of friends who were over there, and trust me your rah rah rah boom boom boom will never carry the day,that will take boots on the ground, thousands of boots on the ground and we will be there a long, long time and without a doubt go bankrupt long before its over…

You gonna be with those US marines charging those “evil” Nork sons of bitches or just gonna watch the damn thing on CNN or Fox news? The latter one right… so take a chill pill, buddy, war, even more so a war with N. Korea, is very, very serious shit… and as always, unnecessary.

There is more than a little hypocrisy in US demands that North Korea cease its “threatening behavior.” Just this month the US and South Korea launched yet another joint military exercise targeting North Korea. Some 12,000 military personnel and 230 aircraft – including stealth fighters – participated in the massive war games. Does anyone think this is not meant to be threatening to North Korea?

It is a shame that the hawks in the Administration continue to dominate. It seems pretty reasonable to open talks with North Korea after a period of “good faith” gestures between Washington and Pyongyang. Why not agree on no US/South Korean joint military exercises for six months in exchange for no North Korean missile launches for the same period and then agree to a meeting on neutral ground? How could it possibly hurt, particularly considering the alternative?

Bottom line chicken shit, if Yung Fat Kim gets missiles that can accurately hit the US, game over and the regime must be removed. We won’t have to put any marines in there, just a few Army units backing up the South Koreans. Our missile and air attacks should be more than enough to make Fat Kim capitulate.

Oh you mean like in Nam Iraq and Afghanistan,better change that to a few army divisions along with those marine divisions, and keep a few divisions in reserve because its going to be a real bitch slapping party and I hope you do plan on joining the fun,but lol your kind never do…

North korea is the last ethno nationalist country and practices economic self reliance. Juche is far more sustainable then the south korean capitalism. If you don’t like that system you’re probably a (((neo con))).

Believe me I am the farthest person from a NEOCON, the Devils themselves, but in this particular case I can see a military intervention. And, again, in this case it can actually be done very cleanly by attacking command and control, electrical grid and other infrastructure with minimal land combat which will get Fat Boy to capitulate! Like I said, ‘a grand bargain’ between China and us with Russia also taking part is the ideal scenario, but Chinese foot dragging and anti Russian NEOCON policies by the US making Russia less than eager to help diffuse the situation makes this agreement/regime change harder to do peacefully. Believe me most of the North Korean people would want nothing more than to unite with the more prosperous south so I would see rapid surrender of NORK forces.

Never took any. If the South Koreans wont fight and the North still develops it’s nuclear arsenal then we will use our air and sea power to kill that threat with the nuclear option always there if the conventional weapons don’t work.

If that’s the case then Trump was right to say ‘let the Japs and South Koreans have their own nuclear arsenal’ because the NORKS are quickly getting one. And yes then get all US troops out of Korea!
But that is not going to happen because China doesn’t want Korea and especially Japan to have nukes. And neither do we.

We can differentiate between destroying a military from afar, a country’s infrastructure and then, occupying it. Occupy and police countries such as Afghanistan or Iraq? we can now conclude that it is an impossibility for the US. Western countries are way too casualties-averse to even try anyway. And it will be very hard to convince first-world troops used to comfort to sacrifice as much as poor but determined tribal goat-herders or Vietnamese farmers with no pampered lives to lose.

The other solution consists in applying overwhelming firepower from afar. What was done to North Korea and to some extent to Vietnam, what is tentatively being tried by the Saudi-US-UK coalition in Yemen. A PR disaster nowadays, to be sure, but even when it was done with abandon in Korea, this didn’t amount to any lasting solution, as we can see today. So there are situations where morale is absolutely decisive, even when the highest technological level is available

What they, conveniently, tend to forget is how the world was organized then.

There were TWO superpowers in conflict and, more importantly, two competing ideologies.

North Korea at the time was supported by Soviet Union and China and, actually, Chinese troops were the problem, not North Koreans.
US military was conscript based and, at the time weak after scaling down after WW2.

Things are different today.
Much different.

North Korean regime is a cult, isolated from the world. Far cry from the same place in 50’s.
US military is a high tech volunteer force; also far cry from 50’s.

I mean, even The Fat Boy knows all that. That’s the only reason he choose to go nuclear and not only on tactical but, apparently on strategic level.

Combat moral is a peculiar thing.
It’s one thing to play war games; quite another to see own unit decimated from skies.

As I said before, North Korean military moral is so brittle it will break in 48 hours should US attack happen.
Those people know about combat as an average Western civilian….nothing.
They read about it and watched some movies. Also heard some old stories. That’s all fine and dandy while nobody is being blown into pieces around him/her. And, of course, while the brass is watching how enthusiastically you behave.
At two in the morning when his/her company gets blown into dust all that self-delusion will simply collapse.

I, mostly, agree with Z-man and Anatoly.

The only problem I see is a nuclear land mine somewhere in that artillery belt.

You have to be insane and (lol some say you are) our military is stretched to the limit,when I think of our military the view that always comes to mind is those wearing red pumps,the fags the gays that all thru history have destroyed nations and empires always from within and we are no different,the mountains of N.K. is what the jungles were to the V.C. and lets not go with the high tech. bullshit for it didn’t work in Nam or Iraq and its not working in Afghanistan.
If we want peace (which I really doubt) than it will be at the table with honest discussions and honest agreements,agreements we mean to keep not our normal agreements make today and broke tomorrow…

In Kim’s shoes, I would be developing nukes too, seeing what happened to Iraq and Libya when the US convinced them to abandon theirs. As long as he has nukes, he is guaranteed not to be attacked by the US.

You appear to have a very inflated view of the capabilities of our armed forces. You do realize that we have never won a single conflict since WW2, except for wars with minimally armed countries like Grenada, unless you count Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan as “victories”.

Insane? I think Kim is anything but insane. He is being very rational in how he is dealing with the US threat. I am willing to bet a large sum of money that the US will not attack N. Korea as long as they have nukes. By the same token, I am willing to bet that no nuclear first strike will come from N. Korea.

I disagree with China here. It is better that Korea and Japan get nukes. Nukes take away the need for U.S involvement, thus would also mean a more independent north east Asia. The Chinese government ought to welome such a development.

Even if all the players have nukes it is highly unlikely that they will be used since most players here are rational and not driven by religious sentiment. India and pakistan are far more likely to nuke each other.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Japanese had produced a stockpile of disassembled nuclear war heads that could be quickly re-assembled and placed on launchers. This would keep them within the letter of nuclear non-proliferation agreements, while still giving them a large and sophisticated capability .

Americans have to be the most delusional people on the planet. I almost wish that moron Trump would start a war with NK/Iran just to see the absolute shit storm it would create and lead to the whole world despising your fucking worthless country

Would a war/tactical strike on North Korea make a whole new generation of military technology known to the public? Surely they would utilize some of their newer planes?

I don’t want war with North Korea if it means distancing ourselves from Russia and allowing our allies of Japan and South Korea to face widespread casualties. I do however, want that fat bastard Kim to roast on a spit like the pig he is.

Would a war/tactical strike on North Korea make a whole new generation of military technology known to the public? Surely they would utilize some of their newer planes?

It most definitely would.
Not only technology but its usage. On top of it a CiC (methodology…execution…processes and procedures). For careful observers (read Russia and China) it will give them a LOT to analyze and, consequently, react about. They’ll adjust their own technology and methodology accordingly. That’s how all that “war thing” works.

I don’t want war with North Korea if it means distancing ourselves from Russia and allowing our allies of Japan and South Korea to face widespread casualties.

Well…that depends on a lot of things.
It could even make those relationships stronger and more stable.

I do however, want that fat bastard Kim to roast on a spit like the pig he is.

You aren’t the only one with such feelings.

Now, get ready for some abuse, I meant “education”, here how totally wrong you are.
Good luck.

North Korea is in a difficult situation.
They are bordered by China and Russia, who both are very powerful
They probably don’t really care about what eu and nato thinks
Then again, they know the west hates dictators and will totally kill anybody with a dissented opinion.
Not so easy for kim ung

I do not know, military-related tech. work is *very* strictly separated from consumer industrial here, obviously the same components (hardened variants) are used at times.

Your post is interesting, it would also not surprising me if it were true, at all. I think the truth is somewhere between a rapid contingency plan as I was suggesting, and almost full prep., as you are suggesting.

‘…Aside from the reclusive regime’s nuclear weapons, Kim Jong-un’s hermit kingdom boasts air defenses that are more advanced than many might realize.

Moreover, Pyongyang has also taken steps to increase its resilience against any aerial onslaught that that United States might launch in the event of war…’

Before I get into the nuts and bolts of what attacking US aircraft might face in North Korea…let’s look at the subject of the US ‘easy’ win in the Gulf War…

This commenter says…

‘…This reminds me of the “fearsome” Republican Guard that Saddam had in the Persian Gulf. Turns out we had total air superiority and just bombed the crap out of them and they surrendered in droves.

We have already seen what happens when an army has huge amounts of outdated Soviet weaponry versus the most technologically advanced force in the world. It’s a slaughter…’

Not so fast…yes…the US was able to effectively suppress the Iraqi air defense system in 1991…but just eight years later…in 1999…the US failed spectacularly in attempting to suppress the much smaller Serbian air defenses…which used even older Soviet equipment than the Iraqis…

Here is what Dr. Benjamin S. Lambeth writes in a 2002 analysis of the US-led bombing campaign against Serbia…published in the Aerospace Power Journal…the ‘professional flagship publication of the United States Air Force…’

‘…In marked contrast to the highly satisfying SEAD experience of Desert Storm, the initial effort to suppress Serbian air defenses in Allied Force did not go nearly as well as expected…‘

‘…NATO never fully succeeded in neutralizing the Serb IADS, and NATO aircraft operating over Serbia and Kosovo were always within the engagement envelopes of enemy SA-3 and SA-6 missiles— envelopes that extended as high as 50,000 feet…’

Here IADS refers to ‘integrated air defense system’…and the opening phase of modern aerial warfare begins with ‘neutralizing’ or ‘suppressing’ the enemy air defenses…a type of operation known as SEAD [suppression of enemy air defenses…]

Dr. Lambeth concludes…

‘…The unsettling SEAD experience of Allied Force sent a much-needed wake-up call to the Air Force’s EW [electronic warfare] community…’

So despite throwing over 1,000 aircraft at Serbia…the US was not able to achieve air dominance…ie its planes could not fly freely in Serbian airspace…

‘…The Federal Yugoslav Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) survived Operation Allied Force (OAF), the NATO air campaign used to force the removal of Serbian forces from Kosovo, which ran from 24th March to 9th June, 1999, and at its height involved over 1,000 aircraft.

Survival of the IADS was achieved by… deliberately not employing all their defense assets at once, known as the strategy of withholding military force, the constant moving about of its mobile surface-to-air missile to ensure they could not be targeted, and the widespread use of deception measures…’

And concludes…

‘…The strategy of withholding military force in Kosovo was a military success, even if it did not prevent a political failure.

Serbia retained its ground combat strength, in the face of overwhelming air power, and the Kosovo Liberation Army was disarmed as part of the political settlement…’

The reason for the Serb success versus the Iraqi failure had more to do with people rather than hardware…

‘…[Allied] aircrews were ready for a wall-to-wall SAM threat like the one encountered over Iraq during Desert Storm but that “it just never materialized.

And then it began to dawn on us that . . . they were going to try to survive as opposed to being willing to die to shoot down an airplane.”’

This is the crux of the matter when it comes to any military conflict…the competence of the combatants heavily outweighs the capability of the hardware…

Military men know this simple fact quite well…here is an essay from Pierre Sprey…one of the designers of the F16…[page 101]

‘…Weapons are not the most important ingredient in winning wars.

People come first; ideas are second and hardware is only third…’

‘…After 1973’s crushing 80-to-1 victory by Israelis flying F-4s and Mirages against Arab pilots flying MiGs, the commander of the Israeli Air Force (IAF), Gen. Mordecai Hod, famously remarked that the outcome would have been the same if both sides had swapped planes…’

‘…In every war, it’s the few superb pilots that win the air battle.

A tiny handful of such pilots have dominated every air-to-air battleground since World War I: roughly 10 percent of all pilots (the “hawks”) score 60 percent to 80 percent of the dogfight kills; the other 90 percent of pilots (“doves”) are the fodder for the hawks of the opposing side.

‘…Submarine warfare is strikingly similar: the best 10 percent of the skippers account for the majority of the tonnage sunk. And, when the ace skippers switch boats, the high scores go with the skipper, not with the crew left behind…’

‘…Ground combat is much subtler and more complex than air or naval warfare thus, relative to hardware, people and ideas are even more dominant…’

We saw this pattern confirmed in the US-Nato bombing of Serbia in 1999…

The hugely embarrassing shootdown of the ‘stealth’ Lockheed F117 ‘Nighthawk’…another F117 was damaged beyond repair and never flew again [and counts a kill]…and an F-16 piloted by then Lt. Colonel David Goldfein, who is now the USAF chief of Staff…

‘…the CIA contacted the French engineer responsible for designing the Kari IADS and passed along information about its vulnerabilities and limitations…’

So it is useless to try to use the example of the Gulf War for any possible air attack on North Korea…

Korea has significant and sophisticated air defenses…including the indigenous KN06 system…which is a mobile SAM system comparable to the Russian S300…

This system is road mobile and includes a sophisticated phased array raadar similar to the ‘flap lid’ on the S300…

Phased array means the antenna is electronically steered…not mechanically…and is much more resistant to jamming…the flap lid [aka 30N6] is actually bigger and more powerful than the phased array on the MIM104 Patriot system…

US air attacks would have a very hard time against this kind of equipment…

Going back to Lambeth…who speculates how much worse things might have been in 1999 if the Serbs had the S300…

‘…Fortunately for NATO, the Serb IADS did not include the latest-generation SAM equipment currently available on the international arms market…’

‘…One SA-10/12 [aka S300] site in Belgrade and one in Pristina could have provided defensive coverage over all of Serbia and Kosovo.

They also could have threatened Rivet Joint, Compass Call, and other key allied aircraft such as the airborne command and control center and the Navy’s E-2C operating well outside enemy airspace…’

‘…As Lieutenant General Short later commented darkly, “It would have profoundly changed the balance of the threat and our ability to maintain air superiority.”’

So the reality about Pyongyang’s ability to defend against an air assault by the US is quite a bit more sobering than some would have us believe…

The North Koreans could have as many as 150 plus KN06 mobile launchers…

As the Serb tactics proved in 1999…the ability to ‘shoot and scoot’ is a game-changer in SEAD operations…

As Lambeth notes…

‘…Even during the operation’s final week, NATO spokesmen conceded that they could confirm the destruction of only three of Serbia’s approximately 25 known mobile SA-6 batteries…’

The actual facts of the matter are that the US has little idea of what Pyongyang’s capabilities are when it comes to air defense…but we can assume that their military professionals are highly trained and motivated…the most important ingredient right there…

The US could well be in for a nasty surprise if an attack is ordered by the political leadership of the US…

My educated guess is that the military professional do not relish such an assignment…

I have no idea what the USM knows of DPRK’s air defences, but they’d be fools to think it’ll be a cakewalk.
Depending on the numbers of KN-19 anti-ship cruise missiles deployed, the USN could have some surprises in store for them as well.

For the last few decades, the USM’s principal strategy seems to have been to build more $10B targets than any enemy could build $10M weapons. I guess as the only military with direct access to the Global Currency Printing Press, it had all the benefits of thievery over honest toil.
Its limits have been reached. Any real enemy can now be expected to have a few devastating $10M weapons for each $10B target. I kinda doubt that the USM has fully internalized all the implications of that reality, and so may still do something stupid that blows its Imperial ambitions apart, quite likely along with its alliances and even the nation itself.

Good realistic, factual analytical report on NKorea war capacity imo, sure im no expert tho having serve army for some years. There is another factor to add, China may has send in tactical weapons to NK as rebalancing of the beefed up US/ SK militarization. This year one China think tank expressed concerns about SK & US may be tempted to risk preemptive strike because of lope sided conventional weapons modernization. Months later, NK is seen parading some China modern multi rockets launchers in one of nation big day. This will put US army well in range as it has extra long strike distance with sustain fire power, mounted on truck for mobillity. If HQ9 SAM(aka improved S300) is provided, that will seriously threaten US Air Force. It has impressive 9/9 hit rate during Turkey procurement invitation demo, top all participating vendors including Russia S400 and US Patriots. Also some anti ship missiles will put entire USNavy and strike groups vulnerable. That may be a game changer to make any war consideration very costly before going nuke.

One thing we can tell Trumps WH is very sure playing bluff and is afraid to go on war with NK. Why? Remember after Trumps UN speech threaten to destroy NK totally, NK foreign minister notified UN later that NK has taken that as US declaration of war, so with took self densive action including shooting down US warplanes outside their airspace? WH press Secretary immediately deny US ever declare war (instead of Trumps seized this opportunity to challenge NK into war). That tells alot about US weakness that NK has checkmate it. NK is grand master of game playing, Trumps is just a big mouth amateur.

As Saker pointed out, there is an important factor, that NK is not another Iraq cake walk, Russia and China! Both are capable in weapons and resources to give Aggressors another Vietnam war, more bloody for sure with their homeland fried. Russia has just show what it can do in Syria.

Any nuclear option is out of mind. Radiation will engulf entire region including SK, Japan, part of China and Russia which is unacceptable. Its not difficult for Russia to provide NK a dozen of Soviet era(Ukraine style) nukes to counterstrike back, that end the entire evil empire… and make these warmongers know what is war like in other countries they had destroyed.

The root of all evils is Greed, which is the origin of Capitalism. Let’s hope the world can become more peaceful without anymore wars and killings, bless with Trumps baring all USNato hypocrisy(this is what i really like him for, no pretense like Obama), and joint effort of Russia& China expediting the collapse of Greatest Axis of Evil with least suffering for all mankinds, including all Americans too.

There are so many violent lunatic psychopath in US, even in this website, simply having so much malevolent towards the world that they think wiping out 20+mil innocent people from the earth is like watching some Rambo movie from their armchair or a game play. No wonder US gov could madly engaged in endless costly war killing innocents without any revolt, because these voters have same insane mentality.

Those so keen on pushing the war should at least read up abit on the history of Korean war, see NK remarkable social achievements(go google NK cities pictures, its not what msm has brainwashed you), and who is benefiting in racking up all these war tension. How can one bear to destroy these decent cities and kill all these innocent people? You must see a psychiatrist immediately.

The article focuses on the tactical difficulty of a land invasion to “destroy” the NK.
But strategically this is unnecessary. The only threat the NK has against the US is their nuclear weapons. But to launch them they need several days to transport, stand up, and liquid fuel the missiles.

So from a strategic perspective, all the US has to do is destroy the nuke testing facilities, the launch sites, and the assembly sites. Plus sever the rail lines into NK. Then stop.

At that point, all done. Now if the NK fires their several hundred tubes that have the range to hit Seoul (their other artillery tubes do not have the range) and some short to medium range missiles against Seoul, the SK will wipe out the artillery and missile launch sites. Where it goes from there is up to SK, not the US.

Yep just as I said back on Dec. 19, 2017, CNN ‘Military Experts’ General James ‘Spider’ Marks and others just today described the same scenario that I did and they added that it would not take too much effort to obtain total capitulation of the NORKS.
I pat myself on the back!! (SEGrin)

Use of multiple, non-Anonymous handles for commenting on this webzine is strongly discouraged, and your secret (real or fictitious) email allows you to authenticate your commenter-identity, preventing others from assuming it, accidentally or otherwise.

Therefore, keeping your Name+Email combination is important, and the 'Remember' feature saves it for you as a cookie on your device/browser.

Also, activating the 'Remember' feature enables the Agree/Disagree/Thanks/LOL/Troll buttons on all comments.

Email Replies to my Comment

Body of Comment

Submitted comments have been licensed to The Unz Review and may be republished elsewhere at the sole discretion of the latter